


Space war: Blood of sanguinius

by StarlessandAngelus



Series: space war [1]
Category: Warhammer 40.000
Genre: F/F, warhammer 40
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:33:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 22
Words: 53,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25898257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarlessandAngelus/pseuds/StarlessandAngelus
Summary: Part one of space war. Marian and Mephison both Librarians of the blood angel Chapter one a chief Librarian the other a child of the primarch both destined to be together or was their bond strengthened by the nexus link they shared
Relationships: Mariah/Mephiston
Series: space war [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1879381
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2





	1. Chapter 1

Chapter one

Thermia v

Six miles south of the Raumath Docks

Thermia was a world of ghosts and half-seen things; a vaporous corpse; shrouded in a winding sheet of fine black powder. Mariah had come here in search of a vision, in thrall to a prediction, but Thermia had seeped in to her mind, clouding her thoughts. What had seemed so clear in the Arx Angelicum now seemed absurd.

On Baal she had dreamed that her, and her alone could save Mephiston. She had seen them fighting together beside a vast, shattered fist- a ruin, surrounded by monsters. She had been sure that the Chief Librarian was on the brink of disaster, the idea seemed ridiculous now, but Mariah could not let it go. She had to know what it meant.

She came to a halt and peered through the billowing ash, staring at movement up ahead. At first she struggled to make out the shapes but then her augmented vision honed in on them, resolving the silhouettes into something recognisable: a group of human soldiers, heading towards her at a slow, exhausted plod. She flicked the safety off her bolt pistol and strode on to meet them. The dust worms had left half of Thermia's settlers insane. The evacuation force had spent almost as much time killing humans as rescuing them. They had escorted thousands to the Raumath docks, readying them for evacuation, but others where consumed by madness they had to be gunned down. As Mariah approached the men she was quite prepared for either eventuality.

It was a group of shock troopers. They staggered to a halt as Mariah loomed out of the soot clouds. The soldiers were clad in black fatigues and thick plates of flack armour. Their crested, iron helmets completely encased their heads, and their faces were hidden behind thermal imaging goggles and heavy, bulbous rebreathers. They looked like thick-jawed attack dogs, the best Thermia had to offer, but Mariah could see they were as burned out as the rest of the planet. These veterans of an unwinnable war had watched their home die and it showed in their posture as they stumbled through the ash and embers. Their heads where hung low on exhaustion-rounded shoulders and their lasguns trailed behind them through the fumes.

At the sight of Mariah they dropped into combat stances and raised their guns.

"Who's that?" growled the leader, trying to disguise his fear with a gruff yell. He looked up at Mariah's power armour, his eyes narrowing behind the filthy lenses of his goggles.

Mariah stared down at him with her icy blue eyes. She scoured the men's souls, searching for the scent of corruption, but found only grief and despair.

"I am Mariah" she replied, when she realised she might not have to kill them.

"I am a Blood Angel."

The soldier glanced at his men, clearly at a loss for words.

"Make for the docks" said Mariah. "The planet is lost."

"Lost?" The trooper could not hide the emotion in his voice. At first Mariah thought is was relief, but then, as the man looked at the ground, Mariah realised it was shame. "Then we really are defeated?"

"Nothing can defeat you" replied Mariah, "Apart from despair. Conquer that and the Emperor might reward you with a more worthy foe."

The soldier's eyes widened and Mariah thought that he might weep. Then her drew back his shoulders and stood upright, giving Mariah a stiff salute. "Forgive my manners, I'm lieutenant Myos of the Vharun Twelfth."

Mariah nodded. "My battle-brothers are surrounding your camp as we speak. Yours is the last manned outpost. We have evacuated everyone else. We all leave tonight."

The men paled. They clearly understood what she meant: Thermia was beyond saving and must be destroyed.

"We were checking the camp perimeter," said Myos, sounding dazed. "We saw gunfire to the east. I guessed it was a relief force, but..." He shook his head. "We were just returning to camp for a debriefing."

Mariah was no longer looking at the man. "The battle for Thermia is over. It is time to leave. I was sent to check for sentries such as yourself. We will not leave good men behind if we can help it."

What did you see? Demanded the daemonic shape, striding towards her through a storm of ghosts.

Mariah staggered. Shocked by the violence of the vision. It filled her mind with more force than ever before. The same crimson eyes. The same murderous rage. The same crumbling stone fist, reaching up from a scorched landscape. The same furious question.

What did you see?

She grasped her head, her cranium pounding. Then the vision faded and the voice was gone.

The men stared at her in confusion.

Mariah lowered her hand from her face and glared at them. She nodded back the way they had come. There was a line across the horizon, just visible through the ash clouds. "Did you travel near the forest?"

Myos nodded. "General Kruk did not realize things were as dire as you say, but he knew we were surrounded. He sent us this way to scout the perimeter. We followed the edge of the forest until half an hour ago. Why?"

"There is an old ruined statue," said Mariah. "A fist jutting from the ground. Somewhere near here. Surrounded by burned tree stumps."

Myos nodded. "I know the place, my lady. It's not far. Near the old pit."

Mariah tried to steady her pounding hearts. "Lead me there. I have to see it before I go. The fleet leaves at dawn." she was talking more to herself than the soldier. "tonight is my last chance."

The men exchanged glances, hut Myos ordered them to make for the docks. Then he trudged back the way he had come, signalling for Mariah to follow.

They waded on through the ash-drifts, the soldier struggling to keep pace with Mariah's broad, powerful strides. After a while Mariah spotted a building up ahead. It was a squat, pugnacious-looking tower, constructed of battle-scarred ferrocrete and bristling with guns. As they crested a hill the rest of the camp came into view: more watchtowers, surrounding rows of blockhouses, all of it circled by trenches and razorwire.

On the far side of the camp he could see a flicker of lumens tracing across the ground. Captain Vatrenus and his squad of Tactical Marines were making their final sweep towards the shattered defence lines, scouring the fumes for signs of the enemy as they ordered the few remaining Guardsmen towards the docks. Mariah frowned knowing she should be down there with them. She had done as ordered and found the only strays she could. Now she should go back, but the visions haunted her. They had filled her thoughts since the moment they landed on Thermia, growing more forceful with every day that passed. She must see the place before she returned to Baal.

"What's that?" said Myos, looking along the earthworks toward another group of Guardsmen, about a dozen of them, huddled together for safety, all wearing straps of grenades and armed oilcloth-shrouded lasrifles.

"Sergeant Athor's men," said Myos. "Why are they just sitting there?"

Mariah had seen Mephiston's tactics many times since they landed and she understood what was about to happen. "Bait," she said, waving for Myos to keep his head down.

Beyond the distant group of Guardsmen there was a black wall of fir trees, marking the edge of the forest that blanketed most of the planet. It was here beneath their branches that Thermia's vile parasites started to stir, smelling the brain matter of the stranded troopers. The Chief Librarian had named them Sepolcrali, long before the Blood Angels even landed on Thermia, using the ancient Baalite word for creatures of the grave. It was clear that the name was significant to him, but nobody had the courage to ask him why. Mariah could not see the Sepolcrali yet, but their hunting call was unmistakable: and eerie, metallic scraping, like blades being sharpened. After a few minutes the Sepolcrali emerged from the trees. They could almost have been mistaken for more flurries of ash flakes – pale, serpentine shapes, coiling through the grey drifts. But Mariah noticed how they would rise up at one end, tasting the air and searching for a scent. The had no face, or any other features for that matter. They where opalescent tubes, ten or eleven feet long, looping and undulating as they snaked across the ash mounds. Mariah was reminded of the sandy shapes that roll through the shallows of oceans – tubular, featureless, inhuman.

Myos some magnoculars and watched the Sepolcrali slip into view. Captain Vatrenus and his Tactical Marines were half a mile away and it was clear that they would not reach the Guardsmen before the Sepolcrali did. "We can't just leave them there," hissed Myos.

"Wait," said Mariah

The troopers on the ridge had seen them too. The sergeant barked an order and the men spread out along the earthworks, each dropping to one knee and shouldering his lasrifle. Mariah could see the xenos more clearly now, unfurling themselves across the ash with a gentle, rippling motion. They where grotesque –billowing spirits, glittering in the moonlight. She could understand the tails of supernatural beings that had littered the battle reports. The Sepolcrali looked like ghosts.

She felt Myos bristling with hatred for the creatures and concern for his brothers down below.

"Wait!" she repeated.

The Sepolcrali were still a hundred yards or so away from the Guardsmen when the massacre began.

Myos cried out in surprise as Mephiston knifed down from the ash clouds. He was like a raptor, silent and lethal. He fell feet first, chin raised and eyes closed. He had the handle of his sword, Vitarus, pressed to his chest, as though he were a figure carved into a sarcophagus.

If the Sepolcrali sensed his coming, they had no chance to react. Mephiston landed with an explosion of ash and immediately began to kill. He whirled through the pre-dawn glow, gliding easily amongst his foes as though clad in silk rather than heavy, ancient battleplate.

The Sepolcrali recoiled and tried to flee but it was useless. Mephiston's sword sliced through their translucent flesh like smoke. The blade shone with the force of Mephiston's mind, blazing and flashing as it tore the ash worms apart. They died in spectacular fashion, bursting into glittering clouds that whipped away on the wind. Mariah had seen similar scenes several times since the start of the campaign, but she still watched with unabashed awe. Mephiston looked like a terrible deity, fallen from the heavens to mete out the Emperor's wrath. As Mephiston whirled and parried, Mariah muttered a prayer, thanking the Emperor for showing her the glory of this divine retribution. Then she noticed ranks of colossal figures emerging from the banks of ash – Captain Vatrenus' battle-brothers had reached the earthworks storming through the darkness, bolters raised. Like the shock troopers, the Blood Angels had no need to fire. Only a few seconds had passed since Mephiston appeared, but he had already destroyed most of the Sepolcrali.

"Wait," hissed Myos. "Prion!"

A wounded Guardsman had emerged from the tree line. He was much closer to the swarms of Sepolcrali than Mephiston or any of the other Blood Angels.

Mephiston had his back to the trooper as he sliced open another of the monsters but Captain Vatrenus saw him and must have voxed the Chief Librarian, because he whirled around.

"Too late," muttered Mariah. She strode forwards and raised her force sword. Mephiston saw the danger too and summoned wings from the darkness, but the white shape had already reached the injured soldier.

The man saw the Sepolcrali rushing towards him through the ash blizzard. He opened his mouth to scream and the creature formed into a narrow, dart-like shape that plunged straight down Prion's throat. It was a revolting sight, but Mariah could not look away. It looked like Prion was vomiting in reverse. A quivering column of ash thundered down his throat, causing him to judder and spasm. He collapsed onto the ground dead.

Mephiston swooped through the air, firing his pistol. Gouts of incandescent plasma thudded into the corpse, blasting chunks of flesh from the body and jolting it back across the moonlit hillside. There were dozens more Sepolcrali to kill but Mephiston was now far more concerned with Prion's corpse.

A second wave of the things erupted from the ash in front of Mephiston blocking his way. He killed them without raising a weapon – blasting them aside with a wave of his hand. They disintegrated in to a cloud of embers, but hundreds more swirled into view, determined to keep Mephiston away from the corpse. He quickly became mired in a wall of glittering shapes.

The hillside lit up as a fusillade of bolter shots tore through the night. Captain Vatrenus' squads had dropped to their knees and opened fire, attempting to cut a path through the Sepolcrali so that Mephiston could reach the body.

"Damn it," muttered Mariah, frustrated by the delay. She looked at Myos. "Wait here. We may still have time when this is finished."

"Finished," gasped Myos. "My lady, do you understand what the dust worms do?"

Mariah gave no reply and waded down the slope.

As the Tactical Marines' firestorm lit up the scene, it revealed something grotesque: Prion's corpse had began to quiver and mutate. Mariah hissed in disgust as it lurched to its feet, already starting to bulge and tear. White light spilled from holes in the dead man's flesh and his head lolled backwards at a hideous angle, swinging from side to side as he began to run down the slope. The Guardsmen on the earthworks opened fire, howling curses. Flashes of las-fire slammed into the animated corpse, but the impact just made it swell and mutate all the more. It blossomed into a misshapen giant, thundering through the ash as the Guardsmen's shots grew wilder and more panicked.

Mephiston ripped through the enemy lines and was hurtling towards the giant, but he was too late. As the bloated corpse reached the earthworks, the men on the counterscarp tried to flee but the giant moved with shocking speed and grabbed two of them in its enormous hands. It rocked back on its heels and threw them up the hill towards the rolling mass of Sepolcrali.

The dust worms shot out to catch them, slicing into their bodies like spears.

Even before the men died, they began to tear and reform. Within seconds their animated corpses where thundering down the hill after the fleeting Guardsmen. The first of the giant revenants was still hurling other Guardsmen towards the storm of sepolcrali and, by the time Mephiston reached the earthworks, there were half a dozen of the lurching colossi. With every moment that passed they grew even larger. The one that had been Prion was already nearly twenty feet tall and still growing. It towered over even the largest buildings in the camp, swaying as though drunk. It swung its lolling head around, trying to spy other victims to toss to the dust worms.

Klaxons blared, summoning Guardsmen from the blockhouses. Las-fire began lacerating the darkness, slicing chunks from the revenants, but the shots only seemed to add to their ghastly vigour. Mariah was still hundreds of yards away, but she raised her power sword and summoned a blast of psychic fire from its charmed metal, hurling it into the sepolcrali as she ran.

Mephiston looked back at the Blood Angels and must have voxed them a command because they stopped rushing towards Mephiston and turned to face the storm of dust worms at the edge of the forest. They raced up the slope, closed on their foe and attacked with flamers, spewing columns of promethium at the sepolcrali. The flames enveloped the ranks of xenos, creating a blinding wall of fire that drove them back into the dead trees.

As Captain Vatrenus pushed back the ash worms, Mephiston placed himself directly in the path of the massive revenants. Six of the twitching behemoths where pounding towards the rows of blockhouses. Some of them where now thirty feet tall and the ground shuddered as they advanced. Mephiston look tiny in comparison, but he waved away the Guardsmen that had approached until he stood alone. He shimmered wit power, as though his body were a window onto an inferno. The light burned brightest in his sword and as he held the blade aloft it shone like a beacon, causing the revenants to stagger and shield their deformed faces.

Mariah had never been so near to the Chief Librarian in combat before and she saw that, even now, dwarfed by these monstrous corpses, Mephiston was utterly cold.

Mariah's thoughts where interrupted by a sound from behind her. She whirled round, sword blazing, and saw Myos stumbling after her through the ash, refusing to sit by as others fought his foes. She muttered a curse, then turned back to the fight.

The first of the giants had nearly reached Mephiston when the Chief Librarian calmly raised one hand and clenched it in a fist. The monsters head detonated. Ash, blood and brain matter poured down its chest as it dropped to its knees. The impact of its fall shattered windows and shook doors from their hinges. Without a brain, undead became simply dead. Mephiston stepped aside as it crashed onto its chest.

After the first giant hit the ground, Mephiston leapt onto its back and launched himself at the second. The revenant reached for him with broken, deformed arms, but Mephiston summoned wings, swooping around the blow and plunging Vitarus into the giant's neck. The revenant staggered back and tried to shake him off, but Mephiston wrenched his blade through skin, bone and cartilage, decapitating the giant with one precise slash of his sword. Soldiers bolted for safety as the head crashed down, flattening a storehouse in an explosion of wood and roof tiles.

The third of the giants collapsed into a molten heap as Mephiston boiled its blood from within and the next two went the way of the first, their heads imploding as though hit by heavy artillery.

Mephiston fought calmly and with precision, his eyes half-lidded as he sliced the corpse giants apart.

As the fifth giant crashed to the ground, Mephiston saw that the sixth had taken its stolen body and fled for the forest. It was almost at the tree line, but Mariah knew the vile thing would never make the trees.

Captain Vatrenus and his men had penned in most of the other worms and Mariah saw her chance. "The fight is over," she said, turning to face the dazed-looking Guardsman. "Lead me to the ruin."

"What of you brothers, my lady," asked Myos, nodding to the Blood Angels. Mariah shook her head. She knew the she was meant to seek this place alone. Vatrenus and the others were not part of the visions that had driven her here. She had seen the moment so many times. There was Mephiston, the daemonic foe and her – no one else.

The hillside lit up as a fusillade of bolter shots tore through the night. Both of Captain Vatrenus' squads had dropped to their knees and opened fire, joining Mephiston in the final slaughter.

As their firestorm lit up the scene, Mariah followed Myos in the opposite direction, dashing for the nearby boundaries of the forest. Myos sprinted through the trees, crashing through the ash-laden branches and trampling over charred roots. After only ten minutes or so, they reached a broad ash-filled clearing, hundreds of feet wide and ablaze with moonlight. At the centre of the clearing was a stepped crater, spiralling down in to the ground, coated with the same banks of smouldering ash that covered all of Thermia. Reaching up from the centre of crater, rising way above the treetops, was the crumbling stone fist that had haunted her dreams.

What did you see?

The vision hit Mariah with even greater force – the same hideous figure, the same whirling cloud of spirits, filling her head with flames and fury.

Momentarily blinded, she stumbled to a halt at the edge of the pit. Visions and prophecy were as familiar to her as anything in the physical world, but none had ever arrived with this violence. It was overwhelming. The vision faded and she hurried down the slope towards the ruins of a small temple. She approached and looked inside. It was a tragic kind of place, with its shattered columns and exposed rafters but, as she peered through the half-open doors, she saw that it was abandoned. Apart from a few ash drifts that had forced their way inside, the building had been forgotten. Creepers had enveloped much of the stonework, smothering the wrecked remains of control panels and research equipment. The temple had been claimed by the forest.

Mariah and Myos stepped inside. Most of the equipment had been smashed long ago but the upper parts of the walls were carved with beautiful friezes. The God-Emperor's hands spread over their heads, reaching out through the stars, spreading the seeds of his fledgling Imperium.

There was a noise outside the temple and Lieutenant Myos backed away from the door, his lasrifle raised.

"They're coming," he said, his voice taut.

Mariah dropped into a battle pose as huge numbers of sepolcrali rose from the pit, swarming up over the stone fist. Until now, Mariah had only seen the sepolcrali attack in small groups, but this was a host. Hundreds of them where billowing up from the shadows, straining and sniffing at the scent of mortal flesh.

Mariah spoke into her vox. "Captain Vatrenus?" As she expected, the only reply was a howl of interference. Thermia's ash storms were a toxic cocktail of chemicals and particulate matter. The comms networks had all been short since they landed. Mariah cut the signal and waited to face the sepolcrali alone, waving Myos back into the temple.

Mariah was about to step out and launch her attack when she noticed how oddly the xenos were behaving. As they spilled around the moonlit fist and filled the quarry, they began to knot together like fibres, twisting and tightening.

As the ash worms grew in number the coiling mass gradually expanded, moving closer to the doors of the temple. Mariah readied his pistol. "You will not find a Blood Angel such easy prey," she muttered.

They had now filled the clearing with such a dazzling glow that Mariah found it hard to look, but she did not need to see them to know that the prophesised moment had come.

What did you see?

The vision rocked her again and her mind pounded with the sense that something momentous was about to occur. The sepolcrali where touching the doors he could hear their pale forms, brushing against the stonework.

"Stay inside," she growled to Myos. Then she stepped out to face them.

The creatures ignored Mariah and hurtled towards each other, colliding in a tornado of ghostly shapes. They formed a vortex, spinning around a figure he could not quite make out. This was the malignant horror she had dreamed of. Finally he would meet his daemonic accuser. Past and present collided as the events of the vision unfolded before Mariah.

In the visions she thought the ash worms were flanking the figure, but now she they were attacking him – diving and lunging, trying to pierce his flesh. She was drunk on prophecy, blinded by premonition. As in the visions, the figure was little more than a blurred silhouette, but as it came closer, Mariah finally saw the truth. She had seen this moment so many times.

"Mephiston," she muttered, her pulse hammering.

Mephiston launched his attack.

There was a chorus of metallic shrieks as the Chief Librarian exploded into action. He spread his black wings and tore through the aliens, gripping his sword in both hands and swinging it in arcs of psychic energy. The sepolcrali burst into sheets of white flame, scattering fragments of ivory meat across the clearing. Mephiston with the same cold-blooded precision Mariah had seen earlier. As he rose up from the tumult, his face was devoid of emotion.

The sepolcrali turned away from Mariah and she watched the scene in stunned silence. There was a dark beauty to Mephiston's lunges and pirouettes but an endless tide of the shimmering serpents poured up around the fist. For every ten that Mephiston destroyed, another twenty arrived; for every twenty, another thirty. However lethal his technique, it was impossible for him to destroy them all. The sepolcrali showed no sign of fear or even caution. There was something remorseless about their advance. Mephiston may as well have been fighting an avalanche.

Mariah shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. She crossed the steps and began firing at the edges of the pit, picking off the creatures that had yet to reach Mephiston. Her shots barked out, shearing through the sepolcrali and filling the air with even more ash.

Mephiston fought on oblivious, his force sword burning through foe after foe. Time wore on and still they came at him, an endless series of thrusts and lunges as they attempted to break through his sword strikes. Mephiston was incredible to watch but Mariah found herself wondering what would happen if one of the sepolcrali managed to pierce his armour. If the possessed Mephiston's body in the same way they possessed their other victims… The thought did not bear considering. She banished the idea with bolter fire, smiling in satisfaction as she saw the mound of corpses she was building. She may have misunderstood her visions, but she was still glad to be here, helping her lord against these revolting creatures.

Still they came and, gradually, the impossible happened – as ever greater numbers of the creatures tumbled down over Mephiston, he began to tire. His sword blows slowed and, incredibly, he started to miss some of his targets, staggering slightly, wrong-footed by mistimed blows.

The corpse-like rigidity of Mephiston's features was changing. As he failed to defeat the xenos, his face finally showed emotion, twisting into a bitter snarl. Mariah could not tell whether the rage was directed at his foes or his inability to destroy them, but it did not really matter; what mattered was that Mephiston composure had been broken. Mariah had never heard of such a thing.

Finally, the Chief Librarian abandoned his sword and unleashed the naked power of his mind, howling arcane oaths and channelling great gouts of psychic power through his open hands. The columns of light tore through the clearing, incinerating everything they met.

Mariah dived to one as a bolt hurtled towards her. She rolled clear but the blast smashed into the masonry behind her, tearing a hole in the wall of the temple.

She turned onto her back and saw a whirling mass of sepolcrali falling towards her. She loosed off another storm of bold shells, splattering chunks of scorched white meat across the steps, then rose to her feet and looked around for Mephiston. The crowed of sepolcrali had become a mountain, built around the white-hot core of Mephiston's rage. Mariah could barely see him, but his power was evident everywhere. The clearing was networked with incandescent bolts. They where now detonating whole swathes of the xenos as well as levelling the surrounding forest. Many of the blasts where also hitting the temple and the whole structure was starting to teeter and slump.

"Myos," muttered Mariah, recalling the Guardsman. She pounded back up the steps, firing as she went, staggering against the shock waves rippling through the quarry as Mephiston's fury grew even more ferocious. Mariah could hear him crying out in frustration. It was a shocking, inhuman sound.

The temple was drenched in warp light. Large sections of the roof had collapsed, covering the mosaic floor in piles of rubble. She half expected to find Myos dead, but he was hunched in the moonlight, gun raised, surrounded in debris.

Mariah nodded to the door way. "You need to leave." she led him out on to the steps. "We will deal with the xenos."

Myos looked out through the collapsing walls of the building and lowered his gun in shock.

Hundreds of the ash creatures were revolving around Mephiston. They were illuminated so fiercely by his wrath that it seemed as though a sun had formed in the clearing. It blazed brighter until Myos was forced to turn away and even Mariah had to squint against the glare. Then Mariah heard a voice cry out, feral and inhuman.

"Enough!"

The sun shattered.

Mariah and the Guardsman were hit by incredible force and thrown backwards through the ruins. Mariah managed to keep hold of Myos as they where lifted from their feet. She attempted to shield him from the hail of masonry that flew after them. Mariah collided with the wall, smashed through the other side and landed with a grunt, her bolt pistol flying from her grip.

Serpents wound lazily through the stars, crushing the heavens in their dislocated jaws. A griffon reared protectively over a flame, roaring the word "Mephiston". A world burned.

Mariah lay there frozen, as a new series of visions ripped through her head.

Suffocating beneath the rubble. Roaring in endless rage. Dead and undying. A woman approaching through the fumes, calling for help. Her face veiled. Her skin torn away. The veil stained with blood where it had brushed against her ruined face. What did you see?

The visions faded and Mariah saw the pit again. The blinding vortex had gone, replaced by the paler light of the moon. Myos was beside her, dazed and bloody but alive.

A dreadful sound filled the clearing – a bestial roar that sliced through the night, making the eerie quiet that followed seem dreadfully ominous.

Mariah rose and helped Myos to his feet. They both picked their way back through the rubble to the front of the building. Mariah paused, shocked by the sight that greeted them, unsure what was vision and what was fact.

Myos staggered on, shaking his head.

The sepolcrali were dead, all of them were dead. The pit around the stone fist was carpeted in burned flesh. The smell of charred meat hung in the air and the mounds of gore had turned the surrounding forest into a charnel house. But it was not the piles of corpses that Mariah and Myos were staring at; it was Mephiston. Or at least, Mariah thought it was Mephiston. The thing crouched at the edge of the pit wore the same scalloped, crimson armour as the Chief Librarian, but in every other way he had been transformed. Aetheric light was blazing through his armour as he tore through the corpses. His flesh was limned with oily, dark flames.

Mariah hesitated, confused, but Myos staggered on, climbing down the steps. "You destroyed them," he said, reaching out towards Mephiston. "So many of them."

Mephiston looked up. His face was a blood-infused flame and his eyes flashed a deep carmine. His teeth gleamed, cruel and white, as he launched himself at Myos.

Myos howled as Mephiston Crashed into him.

Mephiston grabbed him by the throat and lifted him easily up over his head, roaring incoherently. Power spat from his armour as he prepared to throw Myos against the ruins.

"Wait!" cried Mariah.

The words hit Mephiston like a slap, he reeled back down the steps, hurling Myos to the ground.

Myos landed heavily and Mariah followed Mephiston, unsure what to do.

"are you wounded, Chief Librarian?"

Mephiston stared back, a cornered beast, hunched and dangerous, ready to pounce. "Mariah," he said, his feral voice struggling to form the word. Then he said it again with more confidence.

"Mariah." Suddenly, he was changing. He rose from his crouch and drew back his shoulders. The snarl dropped from his face and the dark fire faded from his skin. He looked around at the carnage he had wrought. "What…?" he began, but his words petered out and he looked at Mariah in confusion. He retrieved Vitarus from the blood-soaked turf and stared at it. Every inch of the force sword was stained with blood.

"My lord-" Mariah began, but she paused as Mephiston saw Lieutenant Myos, broken and silent, sprawled across the steps. Mephiston looked from Myos to Mariah, his eyes half-lidded. "Chief Librarian," Mariah said, stepping to his side. "You destroyed so many of them." she looked around the rolling hills of corpses.

"Whatever happens now, the sepolcrali will always recall the day they faced the Blood Angels."

Mephiston wiped some blood from his face, revealing the waxen skin beneath. His eyes were still clouded as he turned to face Mariah.

A ghost of savagery contorted his voice. "What did you see?"

Mariah almost cried out as she heard the words that had been so long coming. This was the question that had been echoing round her head for months.

As Mephiston glared at her, animal hunger still smouldering in his eyes, Mariah realised that she could see a shadow of the Chief Librarian's mind. The bond she had felt during the battle was growing – becoming a permanent link between them. They were joining somehow. And as she peered into her lord's mind, Mariah saw quite clearly that Mephiston meant to kill her.

"What did you see?" repeated Mephiston stepping closer.

"I saw you destroy our enemy. I saw you strike them down with-"

"No," Mephiston interrupted, his voice quiet and dangerous as he locked his hand around Mariah's arm, still gripping Vitarus in the other. "You saw more than that. What did you see in my mind, Mariah?"

Mariah faltered. "I have seen strange visions," she admitted, she tried to look Mephiston directly in the eye. "I did not understand them."

Mephiston tightened his grip and Mariah whispered a prayer. Over on the steps, Myos groaned. The sound broke something in Mephiston's eyes. He loosed his grip on Mariah and backed away. When he looked up again, all traces of the monster had vanished; he was back to the Lord of the Librarius once more, phlegmatic and detached.

Mariah's fears suddenly felt ridiculous. How she have imagined Mephiston would harm one of his own servants?

"See to him," said Mephiston, nodding at Myos. "I must find Captain Vatrenus and clear the valley of revenants, or this evacuation will become even more of a mess." He took a deep breath, wiped more blood from his face and marched towards the edge of the clearing. Before he left, he paused and looked back.

"I have work to do in the Cronian Sector but I will summon you when I return to Baal. Do not speak of this to anyone."

"My lord," said Mariah, "I would not know what to say."

Mephiston did not seem to hear her. "None of this is how it appears." His voice was a thick jumble of accents and Mariah could barely make out the words. "And it would not do to cast doubt on me, to cast doubt on ideas that carry such currency, ideas that have given our bloodline such hope."

"of course, my lord" Mariah began, but Mephiston had already vanished into the trees.

Mariah turned back to Myos, eager to bind his wounds and hurry him back to the camp. He met a fixed, blank stare.

Myos was dead.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Divinus Prime, The Cronian Sector,

Six weeks later.

"You are reborn."

Prester Kohath reeled in the dark, shocked to realise that he was not alone. He stumbled over a hill of bones and peered into the smoke, twitching and muttering as he searched for the voice's owner. "Who's that? Who's there?"

Flames had painted everything red, ruins and corpses alike, and he felt as though he was slipping through the guts of a great beast. All around him the world was tearing itself apart, collapsing in a promethium storm of blood and fire. Valkyrie gunships screamed past like daemons, carving up the night with incendiaries and bolter fire, while the valley below sank under the weight of its numberless dead. Prester Kohath reached around in the piles of bodies, trembling as he prised a pistol from the fingers of a dead trooper. Such a soft voice should not have been audible over the pounding thud of the artillery. Warpcraft. He would taste it, oily and metallic on the night air. "What have I done?" he whispered. "Why did I leave? Why tonight?" He waved a gun at the distant battle lines and raised his voice, attempting to sound fierce. "I'm not alone. One call to those Guardsmen and -"

Something drifted through the darkness towards him.

"Wait!" He crouched and aimed "show yourself!"

There was no reply and Prester Kohath did not ask again.

Whatever madness was consuming Divinus Prime, it would not consume him. To die now, after finally seeing the truth would be too cruel a trick. He had to survive. Despite his trembling hands, he managed to unleash a blast of las-fire. It lit up the surrounding corpses and they seemed to dance, twitching in time with his clumsy shots.

The shadow fell away and Prester Kohath lowered his pistol, blinking in the afterglow, trying to see what he had killed.

"We are all reborn. With every new breath." The voice was closer now, coming from behind him. "The man who fired that gun is already gone, already a ghost."

Prester Kohath cursed and backed away, jabbing his pistol at the shadows.

"Every new thought remakes us. Every decision is a rebirth." There was a distant distracted tone to the voice, as though the speaker were merely thinking aloud. "There is always another chance."

Prester Kohath fired again, wildly this time, creating another tableau of blue-limned corpses. "Show yourself!" he yelled.

"Would you kill me," asked the disembodied voice, "Without even asking my name?" There was no anger, only mild surprise.

Prester Kohath spat another curse. The voice was directly above him now. He looked up and saw a deepening of the darkness, a shadow within shadows. It blocked the burning heavens as it fell towards him. Clumsy with panic, he backed away, tripping across the rubble as he fired again. Blue flame kicked from the muzzle, revealing a sight so disturbing that Prester Kohath howled.

The bloody ruins had spawned an avatar, a giant carved from the same crimson flesh – an ivory-faced daemon borne on death-black pinions.

Prester Kohath's shots where useless. Each blast ripples harmlessly across the flayed muscle and lit up the things grotesque face – a mask of cracked alabaster with eyes that made Prester Kohath cry out in shock. All the lunacy of Divinus Prime was in the ashen face, burning in an infernal gaze.

Prester Kohath collapsed. He tumbles against a shattered column, struck his head and slumped, insensate, in to a ditch.

When he came to the monster had its back to him. Dawn was approaching, and there was enough light for Prester Kohath to see his mistake – the flayed muscle was actually a suit of thick battleplate, intricately wrought and designed to resemble skinless flesh. The wings must have been a delusion brought on by his fear, but the stranger was a giant, seven or eight feet tall. At first he thought he might be looking at a mortal warrior. Then the light shifted across the ruing and passed through the giant's flesh. Kohath realised he was sitting with a ghost.

To Kohath's relief, the grim apparition did not turn to face him. It was crouched near a corpse, one of the dragoons from the capital. The poor soul's helmet had been torn open by shrapnel and the head was a misshapen mess. Something was crawling through the grey matter: an eager host of milk-white grubs.

The ghost was staring intently at this gruesome display and, despite his fear, Kohath felt a macabre desire to see what the spirit was doing. As he watched, the ghost removed one of its gauntlets and drew a series of arcane symbols on the dusty ground. Then it lifted a long ceremonial knife from its robes, sliced the palm of its hand open and made a fist. A quick torrent of blood rushed from between its fingers and pattered onto the symbols it had drawn. As it landed, the blood traced the shapes of the characters as if it were sentient, feeling its way through them. When the symbols had all been drawn, they flickered, as though particles of metallic dust were suspended in the liquid. The spirit whispered some unintelligible words and then pressed its bloody hand onto the crimson text. The letters bubbled and hissed at the contact, and when the ghost removed its hand the symbols were scorched into the ground. Kohath dragged his thoughts from the strange ritual, realising that, while the ghost was so fixated on its work, he had a chance to flee. Kohath lifted himself slowly into a crouching position and prepared to run.

"What do you see?" asked the spectre, nodding at the broken corpse of the soldier. The spirits voice was cold, inhuman.

Prester Kohath wanted to run, but as he looked at the corpse it reminded him of all the horrors he had seen over the last few months, all the bloodshed caused by a war that made no sense. Rage boiled through him, drawing out and unexpected reply.

"Pointless sacrifice."

Still the ghost did not turn. "Pointless? A strange choice of word, Prester Kohath. What could be more worthwhile than the fight for survival?" He picked up one of the wriggling grubs. "Even these lowly creatures understand that. And you and I understand far higher truths. Unto death we serve, Prester Kohath, unto death. As it has always been." The spirit paused, wiping the blood from its hand. "Or perhaps you've learned a new philosophy."

Prester Kohath's face flushed. "Survival? Is that what you see down there?" He waved at the massacre taking place beyond the ruins. The ghost turned to look, revealing a gaunt, bone-white profile.

Guardsmen of countless regiments where dying in the dark, blasting and hacking each other down in the flames. More pitiful still were the priests, Prester Kohath's own brethren, the Children of the vow. They where kneeling in prayer, holding up patens and censers as volleys of las-fire tore them apart.

The spirits face remained expressionless, driving Prester Kohath to an even greater rage. "How do you know my name, ghost?" he snapped, looking around for his pistol.

"Ghost."

To Prester Kohath's horror, the phantom turned to face him and he caught a brief, unbearable glimpse of its eyes.

"What do you see?" repeated the spirit, still holding the grub.

"Death," muttered Prester Kohath.

The ground shifted and hurled Prester Kohath forwards. He landed gasping just a few feet away from the ghost.

"Look harder?"

Prester Kohath looked back to his dying brethren instead, reaching out to them with a trembling hand.

His head jolted back against his will, forcing him to look at the grub. It was now sated and red, coiling and uncoiling between the ghost's fingers.

Kohath saw a flash of iridescence and looked closer. Slowly, the grub parted its flesh to reveal tiny, diaphanous wings.

"Death?" asked the ghost "Or transformation?"

There was doubt in the spirits voice. This was a genuine question.

Prester Kohath turned to look it in the eye. What he saw in those eyes finally broke his nerve. His screams rang out, even over the din of the battle, and when the echoes ceased he was on another world.

Meanwhile on Baal Mariah was worried about Mephiston as she hadn't heard from him for six weeks. For all she knew something bad could have happened to him that's when Gaius came to get her to help out with something.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

Librarium Sagrestia, Arx Angelicum, Baal

Bells rang out in the Orbicular Tower, summoning a tide of crookbacked wraiths. They boiled from the shadows – pale, emaciated serfs; skittering, spider-legged servants and hooded tube-limbed scribs, all chanting and typing as they ran, pounding at ceramic keys with metal-hinged fingers and singing hymns through, oily, riveted throats. As they flooded the tower's cloistered walkways they filled them with a storm of parchment and plainsong, dizzy with ecstasy and fear.

As the multitude grew larger it grew more frantic and confused. Robed figures In a variety of shapes and were soon milling around the statue-lined halls of the Librarium. Human bondsmen argued furiously over the exact meaning of the alarm, while blank-eyed servo-scribes spewed reams of data at them, grinding out perforated sheets with clanking, crank-handled forelimbs.

Just as the frenzied seemed on the verge of outright violence, a giant in night-blue armour walked into the centre of the tumult, towering over them mob in his gleaming battleplate. Lucius Antros carried an ornate staff, as tall a he was, and he announced his presence by cracking it several times on the flagstones.

The serfs ceased their arguing and stepped back to create a path, panting and wide-eyed as they let the Librarian by. Even the servitors ceased their mechanised din, wheeling and clattering away as Antros stepped up into an iron an iron pulpit and looked down at the sea of upturned faces. Even amongst this strange assembly, he was a striking individual. He wore no helmet his face bore all the hallmarks of a Blood Angel: chiselled, noble, and inhumanly beautiful, framed by a shoulder-length mane of blonde hair. His looks alone would have made him an impressive sight, and yet, it was not the most arresting thing about him. Antros' perfect features were marked by a fierce craving; hunger burned in his flawless blue eyes. Antros was irritated by what he saw: a mania, coiling through the minds of even his most experienced blood thralls. And an absurd undercurrent of panic. He allowed his consciousness to snake through the crowd, plucking at the thoughts of his servants, peering into their blinkered little souls. Their daily routine of study had been interrupted and that was enough to drive them into a frenzy. He had no doubt who would be responsible for stirring up this current nonsense. The chief pedant herself. "Scholiast Ghor?" he asked, his voice strong and resonant. "Are you there?"

There was a scuffle in the far end of the hall as a woman strolled through the crowds. She was dressed in scarlet robes, embroidered with golden runes and, in her own was, Dimitra Ghor was just as striking as Lexicanium Antros. She was so tall and wasted that her robes seemed to hang from her skull-like, shaven head. Only the knife-blade tips of her shoulders gave any hint of the brittle, keen-edged body beneath. Her features were angular and androgynous and her skin was papery and translucent, revealing the pulsing veins beneath. She embodied everything Antros found oppressive about his subordinates. Dimitra was as dusty and dry as an old page. She climbed the pulpit with careful, unhurried steps, like a mantis edging towards its prey.

"Are you responsible for this?" he asked, nodding at the speakers blaring overhead. The distorted amplified sound of bells was still ringing out through the Librarium.

Though unusually tall for a mortal, Dimitra looked like a child beside the Librarian, dwarfed by his transhuman bulk. "Yes, Lexicanium," she replied, keeping her gaze respectfully locked on the floor. She spoke through tight lips, her face rigid. Her large, wide-spaced eyes added to the strangeness of her appearance; the irises so dark the she seemed to only have pupils.

Antros could feel the servants of the Orbicular Tower concentrating on the exchange, even if their eyes were fixed on their feet, and he sensed that their loyalties were still with Ghor, rather than their new lord. He had little interest in the convoluted hierarchies and protocols of blood thralls, but such disrespect could not be tolerated. "Then I overestimated you," he said. "Even the most junior Rubricator can memorise the Rights of Convocation. What is this nonsense you're broadcasting?"

Dimitra glanced up at him, her eyes like disks of flint. "The auguries were quite clear."

"The auguries where quite clear, Lexicanium," he growled.

"Forgive me, my lord," she said, her voice taut. "The signs were quite clear, Lexicanium. There is a psychic rift in the Ostensorio. The warning comes from the highest authority: from Lord Rhacelus himself. We are to seal the gates and ensure the no one leaves or enters the tower."

Antros shook his head in disbelief at the mention of the Chief Librarian's equerry. "Rhacelus? What are you talking about? Show me what you have."

Dimitra slowly drew out a bundle of thin vellum strips, stuck together by carefully applied wax seals. Her hairless scalp was haloed by a forest of brass-rimmed lenses – dozens of them, all different sizes and shapes and fixed to a metal crest. They moved as she examined the documents with infuriating care, focusing on each page in turn and flicking through them with her long, tapered fingers. She held one of them up and used another of her lenses, a mechanised lorgnette, to examine it. The frame of the eyeglass whirred and clicked as it dropped in front of her face and focused on the vellum. Then she nodded and handed it to Antros. "it appears that there is a blood rite in progress that has not gone according to Lord Rhacelus' prognostications."

He shook his head. "Only the most senior Librarians are permitted to enter the Ostensorio. Nothing could have gone wrong with Lord Rhacelus present."

He looked back closer at the text and his augmented irises swam with glyphs and runes. He was sure that she was misreading the signs. Only the most powerful of the Librarius would perform invocations in the Ostensorio, the suggestion that they might lose control was absurd. Then another thought occurred to him: however ridiculous this summons might be, it gave him an excuse to break from his tiresome duties in the Orbicular Tower. He shoved the papers into a pouch strapped to his led armour and turned to face the crowd. "I will make a brief visit to the Ostensorio. Return to your scriptoria and continue your work." None of the serfs dared to look up but he felt the relief in their minds. The scribes hated any interruption to their work and they rarely left the Orbicular Tower.

There was an explosion of rustling noises as the serfs and servitors began clearing the hall.

Antros strode off across the flagstones, passing quickly through the scriptoria, calefactories and libraries of the Orbicular Tower, then out through the eastern gate into the wider Librarium. He crossed the soaring bridge known as the Spear of Sanguininus and marched on through the countless writing rooms, sacrariums and reliquaries of the Sagrestia, accompanied all the way by the harsh clanging of the amplified bells. Then he entered the oldest quarters of the Librarium – dark, narrow walkways, lined with crumbling winged statues that formed tunnels with their overlapping swords. Blood thralls from other quarters of the Librarium were rushing in the same direction, and Antros saw the same ridiculously frantic expression on their faces. He had never felt such a mood in the Librarium before.

Antros' mood grew darker as he saw a priest of the Adeptus Ministorum loitering in the shadows beneath one of the statues.

He grunted in disapproval. Over the last few months Baal had been invaded by wide-eyed pilgrims from the Cronian Sector. Even by the standards of the Ministorum, they struck Antros as an odd bunch. Their white-and-gold robes were not so unusual, but they also had white led painted on their faces and rouge smeared around their eyes, which made them look either sinister or absurd, depending on the light. These white-faced fanatics carried banners emblazoned with a winged, angelic figure and Antros heard it rumoured that both the banners, and the face paint were meant as some kind of tribute to Mephiston. If this were true, it was an affront to the dignity of the Chief Librarian, but the Chapter Council had taken the surprising step of allowing a small group of pilgrims access to the Librarium. He had never heard of such a thing happening before but it was said that Mephiston himself had given the order. The zealot beneath the statue showed little understanding of the great honour that Mephiston had bestowed on him – he was wailing and praying in the most undignified manner, pleading for a glimpse of the Chief Librarian. Mephiston was not, of course, to be found idling in the Librarium and Antros doubted the pilgrim would recognise his idol even if he walked passed him.

Finally Antros arrived at the north gate of the Ostensorio. He came to a halt and smiled at the sight of the vast doors. They were a marvel – crimson slabs of Baalite rock, hundreds of feet tall and covered with glittering, blood drop stones from Cruor mountains. The red stones had been carved with images portraying the early life of Sanguininus and his first meeting with the God-Emperor.

The smile faded as he saw battle-brothers of the Fourth Company gathered at the foot of the steps before the huge gates – two squads of Tactical Marines in full battleplate. These giants towered over the blood thralls who were dashing between the buildings, and however nonchalantly they cradled their beautifully inscribed bolters, there was no disguising the threat of death that poured from behind their featureless visors.

Antros strode up to the captain in charge, the only warrior in the line with his face visible, his helmet mag-clamped to his thigh. The officers stern features were almost indistinguishable from those of the heroes chiselled into the crimson gate behind him. He was as inhumanly perfect as Antros and also carried himself with the confidence of a veteran – a confidence Antros could imitate but not yet feel. The captains only trace of mortality was a thick, ridged scar that began at the right-hand corner of his mouth and crossed up to his left cheek.

Antros climbed the steps and saluted. "Captain Vatrenus," he said. The captain nodded in recognition and returned the salute. "Lexicanium Antros," rumbled the other Space Marine. Even without the amplification of his helmet, the captain's voice resonated like a tolling bell. "I received strange news in the Orbicular Tower," said Antros. He was unsure if he would be able to talk his way inside, but had decided to try. "The auguries implied that Epistolary Rhacelus needs my help."

The captain raised an eyebrow.

"If my masters are assembled here," said Antros, "Lord Rhacelus should know that I am -"

The captain raised a hand to silence him, as though he were the lowliest of menials, and Antros had to bite back an angry retort.

Captain Vatrenus looked into the middle distance and Antros heard the crackle of a vox-message, relayed through a bead in his ear. The captain was clearly surprised by whatever data he was receiving. "Yes" he said. "The Lexicanium from the Orbicular Tower, Lucius Antros. He learned of the situation." There was another crackle of vox-chatter and Vatrenus nodded again. "Standing right in front of me," he nodded "Very well." After a moments hesitation, he stepped aside and waved Antros on with his bolter, then he grabbed him by the arm. "Take care brother," he said, looking warily at the Ostensorio. "If I were you I'd wait in the Auran Chapel and keep your head down." He grimaced with distaste. "From what I hear, Lord Rhacelus is involved in something unusual."

Antros was not surprised by the captain's tone. There were few in the Chapter who weren't unnerved by the mysteries of the Librarius. Antros nodded and stepped forwards.

Up ahead of him, another battle-brother of the Forth Company opened a door at the foot of the gates. This opening was a less imposing aperture, only twenty foot or so tall. It was decorated just as lavishly as the main gates, but Antros did not pause to study it, hurrying on into the Ostensorio as the door slammed behind him. Several members of the Librarius were gathered in the darkened chamber – Codiciers and Epistolaries all dressed for battle in massive suites of polished blue ceramite, apart from one who was dressed in red and black ceramite. Antros never seen so many Librarian's in one place. The air was charged with blood magic and he sensed that a grand ritual was in progress. Dead-eyed cherubs lit the scene, drifting beneath the barrel vaults on flashing, golden wings. Thuribles trailed from their fingers, glinting in the candlelight and trailing a fine, crimson mist. Scrolls of parchment fluttered beneath their fat little legs and the air was thick with incense-heavy smoke that almost, but not quite masked the iron-rich, abattoir stink of the chamber. Antros reached the chapel and climbed its steps for a better view of the proceedings on the far side of the chamber was a huge shimmering hololith – a projection of a Ministorum priest, sitting on an ornate, ceremonial throne. His face was painted white, like all the other pilgrims that had come to Baal, and he looked like an enormous ghost, towering over the scene as the projection flickered in and out of view, broken up by crackling bursts of interference. Even though the red mist that filled the chamber, Antros could see that he was a senior prelate of the Adeptus Ministorum. His chasuble was embroidered with beautiful images of the Golden Throne and his plump frame was draped in religious baubles. The hololith was forty or so feet tall and the priest's face was quivering with anticipation ah he fidgeted and shifted in his chair, staring intently at the Librarians.

Gathered at the feet of this spectral throne was a group of cowled pilgrims, their faces hidden in their deep hoods and their hands clasped in prayer. Antros could feel the religious fervour burning in their chests. They believed they were about to witness a miracle they had long preyed for.

The librarians were assembled in the centre of the hall with their backs to the projection, standing at the top of a broad, circular dais. They were arranged around a golden monstrance – a tall, metal stand set on wide marble base at the centre of the dais and supporting a semicircular cradle of brass. With their heads bowed and their swords raised, it looked as though the Librarians were worshipping a huge, metal chalice. Antros had never before been admitted to the Ostensorio. It was a site of great mystery to him – reserved for only the most senior members of his order. On any other occasion, he would has paused to marvel at the beauty of the monstrance. It was a masterpiece of devotional craft, dozens of feet wide and filigreed with elegiac scenes of angelic warhosts; but he was not looking at the ancient relic. Hovering above it, spitting and steaming, was a sphere of boiling blood.

Antros was so surprised by the huge crimson ball the he let the tip of his staff clatter against the steps. The sound of the metal hitting stone rang out through the gloom.

Some of the priests glanced in his direction, but the Librarians paid him no heed. Their eyes were firmly closed and their raised weapons were linked to the sphere by cords of read fire, flicking back ad forth and painting ghostly images in the dark. The strands of blood magic coruscated and coiled feeding the inferno above the monstrance. Since entering the Ostensorio, Antros felt psychic energy tugging at his consciousness, pulsing through his veins and echoing through his skull like a sinister hymn. He realised that the aetheric power was emanating from the red sphere. As it blazed brighter it filled his mind with an inhuman, looping howl. The pitiless song of the warp.

"Lexicanium," cried one of the Librarians turning briefly away from the monstrance to look at him. Her face was glistening with sweat and the lights made it look like she was drenched in blood. Her features were contorted with pain and concentration and it took Antros a moment to recall that her name was Mariah. "Stand by me!" gasped Mariah, trembling. "Be ready! We're losing him!"

Antros rushed to her side, his pulse racing at the thought of joining such a powerful invocation. As he neared the dais he saw that there was a shape forming in the centre of the sphere. He peered closer, fascinated. Something was alive in the blood. Something wretched in fire. "Losing who?" he whispered but Mariah did not reply.

The Librarians around him were straining in agonised silence as the sphere grew larger, their eyes clamped shut as they channelled furious gouts of psychic flame through their swords. They resembled riggers working at a storm-lashed sail, shaking and scowling as elemental power tore through them. Antros could feel the carrion chill of blood-craft washing over his face and the behaviour if the guards outside began to make sense. This ritual was not going to plan. That much was clear from the circle of grim faces flickering in and out of view as the cherubs whirled over head. The ghostly colossus on the far side of the chamber lent forward in his chair, his eyes straining wider.

"Concentrate," said Mariah glancing at him. "Be ready."

Needles of red energy spraying from Mariah's power armour, flickering across the clouds of scented smoke. Antros felt the force of shivering along the length of his staff.

The noise grew louder and the flagstones answered in kind groaning and creaking beneath the hunched Librarian. Then the whole room started to judder, as if in the grip of a quake.

There was a harsh cracking sound, as though the air its self had snapped, and Peloris was lifted off his feet and hurled away from the monstrance like a child's toy. His massive armour-clad form clattered across the flagstones, trailing smoke as he crashed into the base of a pillar. He cried out in rage and frustration as the cord of magic he had been channelling lurched free, a wild serpent, lashing back and forth.

"Peloris" bellowed one of the other Librarians on the far side of the circle.

Even in the shifting light, Antros recognised him Epistolary Rhacelus was Mephiston's equerry and one of the longest serving veterans in the Chapter. Rhacelus had been responsible for much of Antros' training and his contemptuous glare still haunted his dreams. The psychic hood of Rhacelus' power armour was ablaze with warpfire and, as he climbed to his feet, his whole body shook under the strain. Sparks where crackling around his eyes and gums spitting and dancing as they danced around his face, but he drew back his shoulders and kept his force sword aloft, holding up the column of energy he was channelling. "Lexicanium Antros," he said calmly, as though he were merely ordering a servant to fetch him a drink. "Close ranks." Despite his exertions he managed to give Antros a warning glance. "do not let me down, neophyte."

Despite his raging heart, Antros stepped calmly into the circle, catching the loose arc of crimson on the head of his staff. The impact rocked him back on his heels, but he held his place, clutching the staff in both hands as it quivered and sparked. Pain washed over his flesh, as though he had been set alight, but the agony was dwarfed by the torrent of visions that exploded in his head. Another world superimposed itself over the Ostensorio. Vast sheets of flame thundered past beneath him as powerful wings hurled him through the air. The vision was wonderful and overwhelming. It took every ounce of his training to anchor his thoughts."what is this?" he cried, his voice contorted by pain. He sensed a being of incredible power forming above the huge chalice. "What are we summoning?" Rhacelus was unwilling, or unable, to reply. He merely twisted his lip into an even more disdainful curl.

Antros tried to decipher the shape in the blood. It was still too vague to make out so he switched his gaze to his fellow Librarians. As the light of the sphere swelled and enveloped them, the Librarians noble features began to change, growing feral and furious. They howled in outrage and Antros joined his voice to theirs as he felt the cause of their anger. Whatever Rhacelus had intended to invoke, they were now facing something more horrific. The warp itself was straining to breach the sanctity of their fortress-monastery. Incredibly, something was trying to enter the Librarium. Antros found it hard to breath, suffocated by a potent mixture of outrage and excitement. The vision threatened to overwhelm him again, but then he sensed a presence beside him and turned to see Lexicanium Peloris. Peloris was barely able to stand. His power armour had been rent open by the psychic blast he had taken and his mouth was full of blood. He managed to nod at Antros. "I'm ready," he said. "If you fall."

"What are we -" began Antros.

"Now!" said Epistolary Rhacelus, interrupting Antros as he sliced his sword down through the air. It connected with a brass circular channel, embedded in the flagstones, creating a blinding shower of sparks. The other librarians followed suit, smashing their swords against the metal, severing the cords of power enveloping the dais with crimson light. For a second the red sphere burned white, blinding everyone, then the light vanished, leaving nothing. All the lights had vanished – not just the sphere but the cords of magic too. Unbalanced, Mariah staggered forward, straining to discern shapes in the void.

For a while there was nothing just the laboured breathing of the unseen Librarians and the think charnel stink. Then, as her eyes adjusted to the darkness, Mariah saw a crouched, powerful shadow, just visible in the centre of the circle.

+I was sure the answer would be there+ said a hushed voice, directly into Mariah's mind. +But I found nothing.+

Light seeped back into the chamber as braziers sputtered back into life and the cherubs' candles reignited, revealing the figure they had wrenched back from the warp: Mephiston, Chief Librarian of the Blood Angels, Master of the Librarius.

The Lord of Death had returned.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

Librarium Sagrestia, Arx Angelicum, Baal

Unlike all the other Blood Angels gathered in the Ostensorio, Mephiston's armour was crimson. The ceramite plates where intricately sculpted to resemble flayed muscle and as Mephiston rose from the floor of the chamber his robes billowed around him like blood pooling out in water. Behind him, a faint echo of the sphere could still be seen, a void rolling into darkness, a window on the stars.

As the lights returned, they revealed the sprawled forms of the other Librarians scattered across the stone floor. At the sight of their Lord they clambered to their feet and grabbed their discarded swords. They formed into orderly ranks and pounded the hilts against their chests. "Chief Librarian," they cried in proud, strident tones. Taking her place amongst them, Mariah mirrored their salute and stood erect, awed by the sight of her Lord.

At the same time the projection of the priest rose from its throne and began shouting words that were lost to the void. His mouth opened and closed but no sound reached the chamber. The hooded priests crowded around the projector, tapping dials and flicking switches until a deafening voice boomed through the air, backed by a shrill wail of feedback.

"My lord! What did you find?" roared the ghost-priest, his jowly face trembling with emotion. "Is Divinus Prime safe? Did you -"  
He paused as he noticed what Mephiston was carrying. Hanging limply in the Chief Librarian's grip was an unconscious man, a robbed priest.

+Yet perhaps there was the echo of an answer,+ said Mephiston, speaking calmly as if he had just entered the hall through a doorway. +Something just beyond my reach.+ No one else heard him and Mariah realised the words only existed in her head.  
"An answer to what?" she whispered.

The flickering image cried out again, frustrated by the lack of a reply. "Chief Librarian?" The static-chopped voice broke down into a series of barks and feedback loops. "Can. You. Hear. Meee? What had bebebebecome. Divinus Prime?" He stared at the unconscious man. "Who is that? One of ours?"  
Mephiston continued to ignore him as he laid the priest carefully on the floor and turned back to the fading sphere. A look of mild surprise crossed his face. +I have been followed+ he said, speaking directly into Mariah's mind again. He sounded intrigued rather than alarmed.  
Mariah braced herself seconds before the chamber exploded. A thunder crack hurled Mephiston through the air. He smashed through the ranks of Librarians and tumbled into the darkness, leaving a trail of sparks as his armour scrapped across the stone.  
Behind him, the after-image of the Blood sphere surged back into existence and warped into a new form. Crimson light became crimson flesh as a gaping wound opened in the air, hanging just above the floor. It swelled like a disease-bloated tumour. The air air around it rippled and congealed like pus. It looked like a septic scar, opening into nothing.  
The priest recoiled in horror, despite being half a galaxy away, but Mariah and the other Librarians steadied themselves and levelled their force weapons at the growing tear.  
"Chief Librarian?" cried Epistolary Rhacelus, searching the chamber for his commander. There was no reply from Mephiston, so Rhacelus gave his fellow Librarians a silent order. They leapt to obey. Fanning out to surround the horror forming in front of them. Shapes were bubbling from the aether. Something was emerging from the wound.  
"On my command," Rhacelus said, Mariah whispered and oath causing her sword to sizzle and blaze with psychic power.  
Flies began to drift from the hole. Just a few at first, winding lazily in to the chamber, then clouds of them, gushing through the opening, adding a low drone to the din that had already filled the air. Mariah recognised the magnitude of what was happening. Danger in the very heart of the Arx Angelicum was unheard of. She stared at the grotesque thing that was quickly filling the Ostensorio. It was a window onto madness and, as she raised her sword a hellish tide f creatures spewed into the room, tumbling through the clouds of flies. It looked like a torrent of internal organs – a coiled mass of glistening tubes and pulsing sacs that slapped onto the floor of the chamber.  
"By the Throne," she grunted as a horrific smell filled the air. It was a thick stink of putrefaction and faeces, and she felt as though she were suddenly inside the bowels of a rotting animal.  
"On my command!" repeated Epistolary Rhacelus, gripping his sword in both hands and bracing himself as clouds of flies swarmed around him. His majestic tones revealed no trace of fear, but Mariah could sense his outrage.  
The visceral, faecal soup blossomed into humanoid forms, sprouting gangly, mottled limbs and hunched pot-bellied torsos. Grubs blistered up from open sores, forming into drooling, slack-jawed faces. Others sprouted grey, membranous wings, bristling, insectoid faces and glistening proboscises.  
Rhacelus waited a few seconds more, his face full of scorn as pus-yellow eyes blinked open in the centre of oozing, bulbous foreheads. Then he raised his chin, imposing and magnificent as he gave the signal to attack, bringing his sword down in a chopping motion.  
Mariah unleashed all her rage and determination through her force sword. A column of blue light ripped from the weapon and slammed into the emerging horde, joining the ferocious storm of psychic energy hurled by her brothers.  
A grinding sound filled the chamber as the Librarians poured torrent after torrent into the creatures. A sphere of light began to form as their warpfire clashed with the malformed creatures, an acrid stench of burning meat filled the air.  
As Mariah saw the full horror of the fly-shrouded shapes she knew instinctively what she was looking at. "Daemons," she muttered. During her gruelling years of training she had seen Pict images of countless xeno-types, including some far stranger looking than this, but it was not the anatomy that arrested her; it was the utter wrongness. They did not conform to any natural laws. Their crumbling, foetid flesh was revolting, but Mariah's mind could see through it; it was just a facade – a shadow of their true, incomprehensible nature.  
Mariah broke ranks and climbed the steps of the chapel, seeking a better view as she looked back at the fighting she saw what the other Librarians could not – their psychic blasts were feeding the wound, causing It to gape ever wider. The front ranks of daemons ere disintegrated under the ferocity of the Librarians' attack but as the hole widened it vomited ever-greater volumes of warp-filth into the chamber. Some of the Librarians strode forward to meet them, Lashing out with their swords and carving the daemons into slabs of scorched flesh.  
"Stop!" she cried, knowing her words would be lost beneath the din. On top of the noise of the Librarians' blasts, the swarming of the flies and the tearing of the air, the hololithic confessor was still crying out, his voice growing louder and more distorted with every word. "MephMephMeph. Whaaaat. Youyouyouyou. MMMMeph."

Everything merged into one dreadful, apocalyptic roar.  
"Lord Rhacelus" boomed Mariah, striding back towards the fight, scouring the carnage for a site of the equerry.  
The whole chamber was juddering and Mariah found herself mired in a storm of flies and crimson sparks.  
She closed her eyes and allowed her thoughts to slip through the tempest, reaching out for Epistolary Rhacelus. Mariah's power was far greater than normal, magnified by the blood magic that was coruscating through the air. What she had intended as a simple call reached Rhacelus as a warp-fuelled scream.  
She saw the veteran stagger under the impact of the message, scowling and clutching his head.  
"Hold!" ordered Epistolary Rhacelus once he had recovered.  
His fellow Librarians obeyed, lowering their weapons. The smoke cleared to reveal a steaming mound of twitching daemons piled before them, smouldering and flickering with ripples of warpfire.  
Mariah muttered a curse as she saw how big the gap in the air had grown – it had tripled in size and was spraying even more nightmarish shapes at them. Worse than that, it was straining outwards, bulging towards the edges. Something was forcing itself against the other side, something massive. As it swelled it spewed even greater swarms of flies. They battered against the Librarians with such force that they struggled to stand and the entire chamber was now a storm of whirling fly clouds, making it impossible to see clearly.  
Epistolary Rhacelus was about to give an order when Mephiston swept through the tornado, his spectral wings outstretched and his force sword raised as he dived into the heaving mass.  
As Mephiston reached the tear, it opened with a wet, ripping sound and a black shape approached through the swarm of flies. There were now millions of the insects, and Mariah could not see the shape clearly. In her mind she saw something that resembled a great geyser of oil that slammed into the Chief Librarian and engulfed him.  
Mephiston's blade flashed and tore the storm apart, blasting the into sparkling blue embers. He continued on into the hole vanishing from the materium into whatever hell lay beyond.  
Mephiston was only gone for a few seconds. The clouds of flies parted as a new nightmare hauled him back into reality – a mountain of mucus-lined flesh that uncoiled itself slowly into the chamber, belching fumes and pulsating like a huge mollusc. It was so large it crashed against the ribs of the distant, vaulted ceiling, and it was encased in a mantle of frilled, rippling muscles that resembles rows of gills. Parts of this undulating mantle extended out from the main mass, creating long, serpentine limbs, one of which had almost entirely enveloped Mephiston. It was lifting him towards a serrated opening in the things eyeless head.  
"No!" hissed Mariah as she saw Mephiston nearing the mouth.  
+Vermin,+ said a nonchalant voice in her head. +Nothing more.+

Mephiston plunged his force sword into the creature's mouth. Traceries of red light rippled through it's enormous bulk and it reared up in pain, smashing through the ceiling of the Ostensorio. The stone gave way, sending arches and vaults tumbling down into the chamber, smashing into pieces and adding plumes of plaster dust to the clouds of flies.  
The Ministorum priests started screaming as the structure of the Ostensorio gave way. Hugh cracks knifed out from the hole created by the swaying bulk of the daemon as it lurched and undulated, colliding with pillars and buttresses. Mariah and the other Librarians where still hurtling thick columns of energy at the daemons, filling the clouds with pulses of light and barked commands.  
A Ministorum priest stumbled through the haze. Mariah headed in the direction, intending to shepherd him from the hall, when another figure emerged from the dust clouds with a swagger. One of the stooping, gangly things had broken through the ranks of Librarians. It stared at Mariah with a bulging, Cyclopean eye, holding up a pair of rusty meat cleavers.  
Psychic flame ripped from Mariah's sword, tearing the daemon apart in an explosion of diseased flesh and pus-green blood.  
Mariah lowered her smoking sword and looked back to find the priest. The man was sprawled on the flagstones, clutching his severed throat as blood gushed from him in great gouts.  
Mariah rushed to aid him but another daemon lumbered into view its jagged sword dripping with the priest's blood. Mariah hunched over her sword and unleashed a blast of psychic wrath, smearing the second daemon across the wall.  
Great hunks of stone were now crashing down all around her and the ceiling was almost entirely gone, revealing the soaring walkways and towers of the Librarium beyond. Column after column slumped and fell, and the two surviving Ministorum priests sprinted through the chaos, dodging falling slabs and leaping over cracks in the floor as they struggled to locate the exit. The hololithic projection of the senior priest was still visible through the bloody haze and falling rocks. He was howling in fear and rage, his eyes wild. But the speakers had already been destroyed and he was once again mouthing into the void – a deranged, shimmering giant, presiding silently over the death of the ancient chamber.  
Mariah's enhanced vision saw easily through the haze, locating the doorway, just a dozen or so feet away.  
"This way!" she cried, shepherding the dazed priests towards the exit. The door's lintel had cracked and the opening looked like it might give way at any moment.  
She looked back to see a wall of daemons charging towards them, countless dozens of looping horrors, approaching from all directions.  
As the daemons flooded across the shattered flagstones, Mariah raised her sword, cutting them down with a scythe of psychic force and filling the air with gore.  
Then she turned and grabbed the two priests by their robes and hauled them out into the light.  
The scene outside the Ostensorio was almost as chaotic as the gruesome struggle taking place within it. The battle-brothers of the Fourth Company were racing towards the building, weapons raised, bus as they climbed the steps the walls and buttresses started bulging and toppling. Captain Vatrenus and his Space Marines took aim as the cause of the destruction rose into view.  
The enormous bulk of the daemon tore forwards, ripping open the roof of the Ostensorio as though it were wading through a low tide rather than demolishing a building the size of the cathedral. Huge hunks of crenellated marble collapsed beneath its bulk, tumbling down on to the Blood Angels below.  
Captain Vatrenus roared a command and the air filled with bolter fire as daemons flooded through the broken doorway, Lord Rhacelus and the rest of the Librarians emerged from the Ostensorio, covered in filth and dust, still hurling gouts of psychic energy as the monsters crashed through the building above them. A low, tectonic groan filled the air, but it was not coming from the doorway. Mephiston was still crushed against the daemons circular mouth, his blade burning read as it sank deeper into the thing's insubstantial flesh. The sound was coming from the point of contact. It was such a bass rumble that Mariah could feel it resonating in her guts, cracks started to spider out from the base of the Ostensorio, splitting roads into shards of rockcrete and gaping chasms that opened up before the staggering Blood Angels.  
The noise grew louder and the Ostensorio finally collapsed, thundering down to the ground with all the fury of a landslide.  
A tower of dust and flies reached up towards the heavens, blocking out the sun, like a doom-laden finger laying judgement on the screaming masses below.  
As Mariah fell backwards, her battleplate crushed beneath a tsunami of rubble and broken bodies, she caught a final glimpse of Mephiston. His ink-black wings were spread and he was soaring clear of the explosion, a triumphant angel, his ivory face turned to the heavens, the daemon's severed head clutched in his fist.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter five

The Circle of Consonance, Arx Angelicum, Baal.

The Quorum Empyrric had gathered deep in the undercroft of the Carceri Arcanum – the place Mephiston was most likely to be found when not ensconced in his own chambers. The gloomy, brick-built vaults were one of the oldest parts of the Librarium and they were a good match for his saturnine character – dark, labyrinthine and unwelcoming. It was also here that the Blood Angels kept their most dangerous relics, so it seemed a sensible place for the Chief Librarian to spend his hours. It was Mephiston the Chapter Master would turn if any of the items locked in the Carceri were to ever gain their freedom.

The Quorum Empyrric was Mephiston's conclave of trusted advisors, consisting of his most powerful Librarians as well as other distinguished officers of the Chapter. These luminaries were seated around Mephiston on a circle of stone chairs in the central chamber of the undercroft, a meeting place known as the Circle of Consonance. They had been summoned to discuss the terrible events of the Ostensorio.  
The ceiling of the undercroft had crumbled away many centuries earlier and a column of green, moss-infused light poured down from the halls above, giving the scene a subaqueous quality. Mephiston was staring into this emerald tower of light, studying dust motes as they flashed and danced. He seemed akin to the dust. The abyssal light made his sunken features as ghoulish as anything in the surrounding crypts. He looked to Mariah as a loyal friend.  
If Mariah had wished to, she could have used her enhanced vision to discern the distant, domed ceiling of the upper levels, hundreds of feet above. At present however, she was oblivious to the tumbledown beauty of the ruined cellars; she was thinking instead of the elevated company she was keeping. The summons that Mephiston promised her on Thermia V had finally come, but she had expected the meeting to be as grand as this.  
She glanced around the circle, wondering if anyone would dare to question the Chief Librarian on the madness he had unleashed in the Ostensorio. Epistolary Rhacelus showed no sign of concern, of course, despite having locked horns with the behemoth that destroyed half the Ostensorio. Mephiston's equerry was as venerable and immobile as his ancient stone chair. He was watching the Chief Librarian with the same expression of haughty disdain he always wore – nostrils flared as though smelling something unpleasant, lip curled, one eyebrow raised. He was unarmoured but the lack of greaves and pauldrons did not make him look any more human. He was as perfectly made as all Blood Angels. Beneath his simple red surplice, the iron hard architecture of his massive, superhuman physique was visible. But like all of his kind, he displayed a perfection that was almost disturbing when seen close up. He had the exaggerated, imperious features of a classical statue, Rhacelus was ancient, even by Blood Angels standards, and not above reminding his subordinates of the fact. Mariah had heard him describe his role in conflicts that were footnotes in some of the Librarium's oldest texts. His white hair was oiled and gleaming, and the harsh angles of his jaw were softened by a short, silver beard, but the years had left a more unusual mark on him. So many centuries of staring into the immaterium had given his eyes a strange, cobalt sheen. They were iridescent like the eyes of a cat, flickering as though lit from behind. He raised his hand in a slow, regal movement and a scrum of robed blood thralls rush from the shadows. He took a chalice from a proffered tray, sipped from it, then dismissed the servants with a wave of his finger.

Seated near the Librarians of the Librarius was the veteran battle-brother, Captain Vatrenus. As Mariah looked his way she guessed that Vatrenus would be the one to challenge Mephiston's actions. Unlike Epistolary Rhacelus, Captain Vatrenus could not hide his outrage at what had happened in the Ostensorio. There were a few fresh scratches on his Mark VII plate, but it was his face that showed the real impact of the fight. His jaw was jutting out and his deep-set eyes were simmering beneath his heavy brow. The idea that the Arx Angelicum could be attacked in such a way had left him wide-eyed with indignation. For the moment, Captain Vatrenus held his ire in check, so Mariah turned from the battle-brothers of the Fourth Company and looked at the one member of the Quorum Empyrric no seated in a chair. Scholiast Imola was the most senior Chapter-serf in the Librarium – oldest of all the scholiasts. The Chief Librarian had spoken often of Imola's fathomless wisdom and despite being human she was regularly admitted to his inner council.

Imola's ancient form was preserved in an ornate, bronze casket called an embryon, which had been carried to the meeting in a mechanical palanquin that walked on dozens of hydraulic legs. The top of the palanquin was a seething nest of serpentine limbs. Clad in ribbed steel and ending in a mixture of styluses, claws and lenses that cradled the little chest. The centre of the casket was filled with crimson liquid, but it was just possible to make out her small, foetal shape floating in the solution – pale, blind and suspended by rubber umbilical cords.

Mariah turned her gaze to the other side of the circle, and the only non-Baalite members of the meeting. The emissaries of the Adeptus Ministorum lacked the martial perfection of the Space Marines, but they were imbued with another, equally potent power – a faith so furious that it inured them to the simple privations of the flesh. A mixture of passion and devotion radiated from their bleached faces, as vivid as the light shining from Rhacelus' eyes. Two of them were present and the third appeared in the form of a flickering hololith. The projected priest was the same senior prelate Mariah had seen in the Ostensorio and he had been introduced to the quorum as Confessor Zin. Zin's image was hanging a few feet above the ground, at the centre of the circle of stone chairs. His likeness was now life-sized, rather than the colossal figure Mariah had witnessed in the Ostensorio.

"My Lord Mephiston," said Captain Vatrenus, unable to hold back his outrage any longer. "We have assured you that all necessary measures have been taken to secure the Ostensorio. Epistolary Rhacelus has spoken at great lengths of the psychic wards he has employed to seal the breach in real space and I have detailed work of my squads." His tone was bullish. "Chief Librarian, will you explain what you were attempting? I do not understand much of what occurs in the Librarius, but this was more shocking than anything I have seen before. My lord," he said, making no effort to hide his disapproval. "What was so important that you would risk the sanctity of our fortress-monastery?"

Mephiston fixed his gaze on Captain Vatrenus. "They were vermin," he said quietly. "Nothing more. The Arx Angelicum was never in danger." His words flowed into each other, heavy with an odd mixture of accents, making it hard to catch his meaning.

"Lord Mephiston," said the hololith of confessor Zin, his jowly features trembling. "Perhaps I could help illuminate your council on why you risked such hazardous methods?"

Vatrenus looked appalled by the mere existence of the priest, but Mephiston gave him a vague nod.

Zin's eyes flashed triumphantly and he cast his gaze around the members of the quorum "Noble lords and lady of the Librarius, Mephiston has admitted me into this most sagacious gathering because the time has come for plain speech. You should know that I have seen your master's name written in the funeral pyres of a thousand loyal souls. For nearly a decade, the God-Emperor has filled my dreams with visions of Mephiston, and Mephiston alone, calling me hither. Lords and Lady of the Librarius, you should know that it has been prophesied that Lord Mephiston is the Astra Angelus." Zin's hand trembled as he snatched a medallion hung around his neck and held it up as though it explained his words. The design was impossible to make out through the interference of the transmission, but he waved it at them as proof. "Ten long years ago, the jewel of the Cronian sector, Divinus Prime, was stolen from the Light of the Emperor – snatched from the sight of even the most determined astropathic choirs. But it has been written in the blood of our holy martyrs that Mephiston will one day lead us back there – lead us to the site of our most hallowed shrines. What you saw in the Ostensorio was proof that this could be done. Mephiston has travelled through the immaterium unaided."

Captain Vatrenus glanced at Epistolary Rhacelus, disbelief clearly written across his face. His eyes widened in shock as Rhacelus looked calmly back at him, confirming the priest's outlandish claim through silent assent.

Zin raised his voice, perhaps sensing the Captain' doubt even from across the galaxy. "Every one of my visions and prophecies has proven to be true. The ritual in the Ostensorio achieved something incredible and divine. Your lord travelled safely through the warp and located the stolen world of Divinus Prime. He has pinpointed the location of a place the rest of the imperium cannot even see."

Zin lowered his medallion and collapsed back in his chair, exhausted by his own fervour, looking expectantly at Mephiston to continue the tale.

The Chief Librarian remained silent and Zin leaned closer, triggering a burst of interference that sheared his head, creating s double-headed, shimmering phantom. "Lord Mephiston, will you not tell us all what you saw? I have travelled across half the galaxy to see you. I have faced…" His words faltered. "I have faced things that I will not easily forget and lost many friends, but I will reach Baal within days Mephiston." His tone became desperate. "And now I am so close, I beg you to tell me what you have learned. You have achieved the impossible, but what did you see, my lord? I must know!"

Mariah brindled at the priest's tone. For a mortal to demand information from one of the Space Marine Chapters was shocking, but to speak in such away to the Chief Librarian of the Blood Angels was incredible. Mariah saw that she was not the only one to note the break with protocol. Captain Vatrenus' face had flushed a dangerous red and he had clenched his teeth together with the strain of staying quiet.

Mephiston remained motionless. He paid no attention to the priest and continued watching the spiralling dust with a cold, reptilian stillness.

"Divinus Prime is no ordinary world!" whispered Confessor Zin, attempting to snap Mephiston out of his reverie. "i must know how we can recover it."

The two other priest's echoed the words "Divinus Prime" in awed whispers

"We are at the very gates of damnation, Astra Angelus," continued Zin. "The very gates." He plucked a leather bound book from his robes and began quoting from it, his voice shaking with passion. "On the banks of Esomino, before the walls of Volgatis, was his wrath made manifest"

"His wrath" whispered the other priests

"Five times five hundred were the foes he cast unto the earth," continued Zin. "Five times five were the walls that toppled before his voice. Behold, the brazen beasts of the -"

"Confessor Zin," interrupted Mephiston, finally breaking his silence. There was something dangerous about his soft tones and the priests hushed. Then Mephiston seemed to notice something odd about his hand. It was clenched into a fist but Mephiston stared at it as though he had not willed his fingers to close. He paused, neglecting to finish his sentence as he slowly opened his fingers and placed his hand back on the arm of the chair.

"Yes?" demanded Zin.

After a few seconds, Mephiston looked up from his hand and continued in the same flat, dispassionate voice "You need not quote the Vicissitudes in its entirety." There was no anger in his voice, just quietly stated a face "I have read all five translations." He nodded at the book in Zin's hands. "Uliarus missed most of the original intent but I have a copy of the Pindarus I could lend you."

Epistolary Rhacelus snorted in amusement but Zin's disappointment changed to frustration. "What did you see, Chief Librarian?" he snapped. "What did you find? You were gone for twelve days. What has happened to Divinus Prime?"

"This is too much," growled Captain Vatrenus, leaning forwards in his chair and glancing at Zin. "You will not speak to the Chief Librarian in such a way."

Mephiston raised a hand and Mariah saw that he was listening to a distant voice. She could even hear the exact words, lisping and hissing in her lord's thoughts. They were spoken in ragged tones. We are what our scars made us. We are born in blood. The words were accompanied by a familiar vision: the same lidless, flayed, veiled face Mariah had seen on Thermia. The words and the face vanished as quickly as they came and Mariah had realised that she had read Mephiston's thoughts again. The idea unnerved her. Mephiston's mind was not for her to see. Such insight was heretical.

"Your Cardinal world still exists, Confessor Zin," Mephiston said, looking at the priest directly for the first time and moving forwards so that the light spilled across his face. Mephiston's features must once have matched the beauty of the other Blood Angels, but his face was now a shattered death mask: a bleached collision of jagged angles and harsh lines, all pointing to his intense, unblinking eyes.

Zin's hololith squirmed and looked away, visibly shaken by Mephiston's gaze. "Are you sure? Divinus Prime is safe?"

Mephiston raised an eyebrow. "Safe? No. Is is not safe. Nothing in the Cronian Sector is safe, Confessor Zin. You of all people should know that. The wars of Sanctitude are no nearer completion than when we began prosecuting them, a century ago, but…" He paused and looked into the shadows. "But Divinus Prime still exists. I spent several hours there." He frowned in distaste. "It is a mess, like the rest of the sector."

The priests made the sign of the Aquila at this and looked aghast, and Confessor Zin stared across the galaxy, attempting to look Mephiston in the eye. Even as a projection, there was no mistaking his alarm.

"Divinus Prime is hallowed ground," he whispered, his voice trembling with emotion. "It is forbidden to all… all but the most senior members of the Ecclesiarchy. With respect, my lord, you were never given permission to go there."

Aloof as he was, even Rhacelus balked at the words "given permission." "You asked the Chief Librarian to find your world, Confessor Zin," he drawled, not deigning to look at the priest, "and he found it." His words washed across the gathering, gravelly and languid. "A little gratitude might suit you better than this disrespect."

Zin's eyes widened in fear, but he bit back a reply. He looked at someone else in the strategium of the frigate that was hurling him towards Baal. He nodded and turned back to Mephiston. When he spoke again, it was with a more emollient tone. "The priest I saw you holding in the sacristy, my lord – was he from Divinus Prime? Was he one of my own order?"

Mephiston nodded. "Prester Kohath." The look of distaste remained on his face. "A luckless pawn, caught up in a pointless schism, confused by his own transgressions."

"transgressions? Schisms?" exclaimed Zin. "I assure you, Chief Librarian, there are no heretics on Divinus Prime. It is not possible."

Mephiston held up his hand. "The sector is dancing to a tune not of our making, Confessor. Would that it were otherwise." He shrugged. "But I did not say Prester Kohath was a heretic. The idea of heresy had barely taken shape in his mind when I lifted him from his home." Mephiston glanced passed the hololith and looked directly at Mariah.

Mariah stiffened as Mephiston's corpse-cold eyes locked on to hers. Mephiston was reading her mind, checking to see if any one was after the Primarch's daughter, or trying to get at her without going through him and the Blood Angel army.

Mariah tried to stay calm as Rhacelus and the other Librarians watched her with grim countenances.

"Then he still lives?" asked Confessor Zin, ignorant of the glances being directed at Mariah. "You have a survivor from Divinus Prime here, in your Librarium?" Hope kindled in his red-rimmed eyes and he clutched his medallion, mouthing a prayer. "I would beg that you hand him to my brethren immediately," he said. "And then you can fulfil the holy mission allocated to you by the God-Emperor himself, by showing me how I may find the banks of Esomino, and the sacred gates of Volgatis."

Mephiston continued to look at Mariah. "Prester Kohath glimpsed the corner of a truth and believed it to be dreadful, but truths are only dreadful when one is unable to understand the entire form." He spoke in the same quiet, impenetrable tone he always used.

"Chief Librarian," groaned Zin "Do you realise how you're tormenting me? You talk of transgressions and schisms, while refusing to give me a direct answer. Can you lead us to Divinus Prime. We cannot simply abandon our brethren to the mysteries of the warp. The vow must be honoured. We must find a way to bring them home."

For the first time since the conclave began. Mephiston focused all of his attention on the priest. Something flickered in his eyes and he sat upright in his chair. "The vow?"

Confessor Zin looked away with an awkward expression. "Just like men those poor souls on Divinus Prime swore to serve the God-Emperor."

Mephiston fell quiet again, but this was a different kind of silence. He was staring at the sweating priest, his whole body rigid with concentration. He tilted his head back and a crimson sheen washed over his eyes. They became featureless red orbs, giving Mephiston an even more disturbing appearance. Confessor Zin looked anxiously to his unseen advisors for guidance.

Mephiston blinked back the blood from his eyes and looked at the two priests who were in the chamber. His whole demeanour had changed. The full, unnerving force of his gaze was now locked on the members of the quorum. It was as though he had emerged from a drug-induced haze.

When he spoke to Zin again, his voice was clear and distinct. "The name Astra Angelus is unfamiliar to me, Confessor Zin, and I have never seen the banks of Esomino, but your visions have not lead you astray. I do see the world you have lost. And I may be willing to help. We will talk more when you reach Baal."

Zin looked panicked as he realised he was being dismissed. "Chief Librarian! I have not finished. I beg that you listen to -"

Mephiston glanced at the hololith projector and it died with a rattle of slowing cogs, ending Zin's plea mid-sentence.

As their prelate vanished from view, the two hooded priests rose to their feet. "Lord Mephiston-" protested one of them.

Mephiston gave a dark glance and the priest's words caught in his throat.

"This will require some careful thought," said Mephiston. "Rhacelus will summon you when I am ready."

The ecclesiarches backed away from their chairs, alarmed, as Mephiston stood, towering over them. Zin's brethren muttered anxiously as they were led away from the undercroft, shepherded down the crumbling colonnades of the Carceri Arcanum by one of Captain Vatrenus' battle-brothers.

Once the priests had left, Mephiston sat down in his chair and stared up through the ragged hole in the ceiling, studying the glittering dust motes again. He remained like that for several minutes and an awkward silence descended over the quorum.

Rhacelus spoke up. "Chief Librarian, our failures in the Cronian Sector are no secret. The Wars of Sanctitude have claimed dozens of worlds and we still have no idea who is behind all these absurd schisms. And the Adeptus Ministorum know we are in the dark. Why have they approached you about Divinus Prime?"

Mephiston looked at his circle of advisors, as though noticing them for the first time. Then he shook his head. "Rhacelus. what did you say?"

"Why have these priests approached you about the destruction of Divinus Prime?"

"Destruction? Divinus Prime has not been destroyed, Epistolary Rhacelus, it has been stolen – plucked from the air like a conjurors prop." Mephiston clicked his long, tapered fingers and stared at them.

"And now Zin's visions have brought him to my door."

Rhacelus laughed. "You mean this Astra Angelus nonsense?"

Mephiston nodded. "I do not recognise that title, but I have felt a call. A call similar to the one Zin has felt. I felt something long before Zin petitioned Commander Dante and asked to approach me. And I have seen things. Other things that seem to concern Divinus Prime." He glanced at Mariah, as though expecting her to speak.

"My lord," said Scholiast Imola. Her words were relayed through a vox-unit attached to the side of the embryon, emerging as a reedy metallic whisper. "I'm surprised to see Confessor Zin make such a fool of himself. He was practically lecturing you. Whatever affection he holds for this particular Cardinal World, it's strange even for a priest to behave quite so absurdly. What do you think has driven him to speak like that?"

Rhacelus let out another derisive snort. "These ill-bred fanatics have no concept of manners or rank." He watched the receding figures of the priests, sneering as they slipped from view. "But then who does, these days? There was a time when lower orders understood their place."

"There is more to this Cardinal World than he's telling me, Scholiasts Imola," replied Mephiston. "That's why he believes so oddly. He's only giving me half a story. Which is why I went to see the place for myself." He looked down at his hand, noticing it was clenched into a fist again. With an odd grimace, he slowly spread his fingers. "I must look into this further."

With that, Mephiston dismissed the quorum. Captain Vatrenus and his men were ordered back to the Ostensorio to continue the slow, careful work of reconsecrating the ruins, while most of the Librarians headed back to their own chambers. Mephiston requested the presence of Antros and Mariah in his private quarters.

As they left the undercroft and travelled up through the Carceri Arcanum, heading back towards the upper levels of the Librarium, Lady Mariah held up a hand to Mephiston, signalling that she wished to speak with him alone. Mephiston waved Antros on and the old warriors stepped through an archway into a shadowy antechamber at the side of the passageway.

They were in a part of the Carceri Arcanum called the Sacellum of Lineaments: a maze of galleries, designed to illustrate the incredible variety of xenos species crushed by the Chapter since the earliest days of the great crusade. Each chamber was lined with rows of marble plinths and on top of each plinth was a bust, carefully sculpted to resemble the head of a bested alien foe. The Blood Angels employed only the most skilled artisans and the busts were terrifying in their realism. Mariah and Mephiston came to a halt near the head of a huge, one-eyed raptor, its cruel beak open in an eternal, sound-less scream.

Mariah looked around the room and when she was sure they were alone, her habitually angry expression softened. She clasped the shoulder pad of Mephiston's battleplate and leaned closer to him. "Tell me the Truth Calistarius." Her soft eyes flickered with concern. "I have not seen you since Thermia. Is it getting worse?"

Mephiston's expression remained as impenetrable as ever, but he did not reprimand Mariah for using his old name, which Mariah took as a good sign.

Mephiston slowly removed one of his gauntlets and held up his hand.

Mariah muttered a curse as she saw that Mephiston's skin was rippling with dark fire. Black, brittle fames danced across his knuckles and sparked between his fingers. In places, the darkness had entirely replaced his skin, turning Mephiston's hand into a ghostly shadow.

"What is this?" asked Mariah

"The Gift. It has been like this since Thermia," said Mephiston. "It will no longer leave me, Mariah, even when I am calm. It is there, constantly. Even now it is battling within me." He closed his eyes and the darkness faded. "I can barely control it any more. It grows more powerful by the day but the more I struggle with it, the more I …" He held up his hand, leaving wisps of shadow in the air as he moved it. "The more I try to suppress the Gift, the more it consumes me. And it's not just my flesh that is changing. My mind is growing darker too. I'm intoxicated by it, Mariah. Intoxicated."

Mariah stared at Mephiston's odd, smouldering skin. "But what of Divinus Prime? Do you see hope there or not? Did all those visions mean nothing? I seen it myself someone was calling to you."

Mephiston stared at his hand for a little longer, then muttered an oath and shoved his gauntlet back on. "Someone is calling to me, I'm sure of it. I hoped to find a clear answer there, or perhaps a clue to the problems in the Cronian Sector, but I knew after just a few hours that I had made a pointless journey. After all these visions and messages. Divinus Prime was just another bloodbath – believers killing believers over some detail of religious doctrine, just as confusing as the Cronian Sector. I have to admit I returned here baffled, old friend. Neither of my hopes turned out to be true. I found no link between Divinus Prime and the Gift, and I found nothing that could point us to the architect of all these insurgencies." Mephiston frowned. "But now, after listening to Zin's gibberish, I think perhaps the visions do have some worth. Perhaps I missed something on Divinus Prime, something crucial. There might be a way after all."

Mariah shook her head confused. "A way to harness the Gift?"

"A way to unleash it." A rare flicker of passion transformed Mephiston's face. "A way to become the weapon the Angel wished me to be. A way to fulfil my destiny. To truly grasp what I have been given and finally name it friend or foe." Mephiston turned his gaze to the stone bust, staring at the one-eyed eagle. "Do you remember this?" he asked. "Do you remember the Battle of Khatan?"

Mariah laughed, a sweet, gentle sound that echoed through the halls. "I'm not likely to forget it. You didn't show much distinction between friend and foe that day."

Mephiston nodded. "Even then I realised the truth, the possibilities." He held out a hand and allowed the dark fire to envelop his gauntlet. "I must believe this power comes from the Angel. I have to."

When Mephiston spoke again it was with an uncharacteristic note of emotion. "You are my only love in this galaxy, Mariah – my only true love. I trust you even when I do not trust my self. I would only wish to share this with you. You have seen when I thought everything was lost, on Thermia five, your saw into my soul. You even seen the skinless woman that has been calling to me. She is the key to all of this I know it. I think she may be the one infecting that whole sector with thought of sedition and heresy. Some champion of the Ruinous powers, perhaps, and maybe you can help me discover who she is. You are..." He shook his head, unsure how to continue.

"Calistarius" said Mariah

"You are gifted in a way I had not foreseen, Mariah, in a way I still do not understand. Something happened on Thermia that created a nexus between us, joining my thoughts to yours." Mephiston studied the black flames licking across his battleplate. "I cannot tell if it will be for good or ill, but you have found your way into my future. Our fates are bound."


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter Six

The Diurnal Vault, Arx Angelicum, Baal.

Time was frozen in the Diurnal Vault, trapped forever by the agonies of a dying star. As Lexicanium Antros entered he was left purblind by the majesty of the immense chamber. His enhanced eyes quickly adjusted to the glare, but even then he could see little – vast, blazing pillars of light, hanging overhead, so tall that their summits vanished out of sight. The vault was built on a scale that defied physics. It could not, by any normal rules of science, exist within the confines of the Librarium. And yet here it was, existing.

At the centre of the hall was Idalia, beautiful guardian of a million ideas. She burned endlessly, crimson and furious in her stone prison – a caged star, bound by wards so powerful that no living Librarian could untie them. The star was only forty feet across, crushed, it was said, by the will of the Emperor Himself, but she was embedded in the chest of a truly monolithic statue: a towering winged angel, resting one hand on the pommel of a sword the size of a cathedral, and holding the other aloft, palm upwards. What ever the truth of Idalia's capture, she retained enough brilliance to illuminate every inch of the colossal statue. Generators, conductors and valves hummed as they distributed her power through her growling banks of voltaic batteries, then across black, Baalite stone. She pumped crimson fire into a dazzling arterial network and the light was greatest as it reached the statue's open palm. Hovering above the hand were three enormous red gemstones. These towering slabs of crystal seemed to be merely beautiful, but Antros knew the truth. The crimson tears contained millions of texts, visible only to the most potent psykers. Even after his years of training, Antros could barely discern the volumes they contained. Thanks to Idalia, the crimson tears floated gracefully through the chamber, attended by flocks of winged servitors, servo-skulls and cherubs who flitted across their facets, cataloguing, studying and reciting, adding their chattering to the din.

At the sight of the statue Antros staggered to a halt. It was like meeting Sanguinius himself, so great was the likeness. A powerful mix of emotions washed over him. Once he had recovered his composure Antros looked around, fascinated by the wonders that surrounded him. There was no time to explore, though. Lady Mariah was right behind him and Mephiston's equerry was watching him with and even more disapproving expression than usual. Up ahead of them was Mephiston, barely recognisable as he drifted through the tumult, silhouetted before the distant face of the statue, his cloak shimmering in Idalia's heat haze.

As he stepped further into the chamber, Antros' feet lifted from the ground. Idalia preserved the books from depredations of the centuries, but she also played other games. Antros could not help smiling as he slipped the bounds of gravity and swam through the air after Mephiston.

Mariah followed as Mephiston led them up past the statue's chest towards its blazing heart, Antros managed to keep his eye locked on Mephiston as he drifted through the crowds of cherubs and passed through an ornate, marble doorway, buried in one of the statue's wings.

Antros followed him into a much smaller chamber and, as he crossed the threshold, gravity threw him to the floor. He landed easily, with a wheeze of servos and hydraulics.

Mephiston melted away into the shadows and Antros looked around at the gloomy scriptorium they had entered. Hooded servitors were dotted around the edges of the room ensconced in tall, stone alcoves, hunched over flickering screens and scratching away at wax tablets with metal styluses. They were transcribing the glyphs displayed on the screens and, as they wrote, the wax tablets slowly reproduced the text on scrolls of illuminated vellum, decorated in vibrant red ink. At first glance, Antros thought the servitors were merely seated, but then he saw that their bodies were meshed with the machines. The top halves were humanoid, but that ended at the waist, where they became one with the whirring, humming cogitators.

Mariah dropped into the chamber and looked at one of the alcoves on the far side of the room. It was a pool of shadow, but she clearly saw something of interest. "Is that him?" she asked, her blue eyes reflected the candlelight. "The heretic?"

"I would not use that word." Mephiston strode over to the alcove, followed by Mariah. "But yes, this is my guest."

Antros followed and saw that the alcove contained an ecclesiarch, chained to an ornate brass rack. His hair had been ceremonially shaved at the front, just like the priests Antros had seen in the Carceri Arcanum, and he clearly belonged to the same order, but his robes were filthy and torn. He had obviously survived some terrible ordeal. His face was as bloodless as Mephiston's and his tonsured hair was matted with gore. And his trials were clearly not over. The rack was laced with bundles of wires and cables, most of which threaded under his skin. He looked like a diagram of a man spread-eagled and surround by a fan of rubbery black tubing. Dark viscous liquid was pumping through the tubes into his body. His eyes were closed but he was far from peaceful, muttering and flinching as he slept. "What have you done to him?" Antros was intrigued by the intricate, cosmological symbols drawn over the man's skin.

Mephiston's face was as emotionless as ever, but Mariah glared.

"Address you Chief Librarian with respect, neophyte." Mariah had completed Antros' training. She knew Antros had not been a neophyte for several years, but still seemed to enjoy taunting him with the term.

"Forgive me, my lord," said Antros.

"This is Prester Kohath," said Mephiston, oblivious to Antros' breach of etiquette. "He was seconds from death when I lifted him from Divinus Prime. When I found him he was making his way through a ruined temple, seeking the company of cultists, unaware that they were all about to be destroyed by their own ordnance."

Mephiston tapped one of the display screens, peering at the cascading figures. "In saving him from the Cronian Sector, I almost destroyed him." He glanced at Antros. "Part of what you see here is my attempt to keep him alive."

"Why bring his back, my lord?" Mariah looked at the unconscious priest with obvious distaste. "You said he was seeking cultists. Surly a swift execution would have been more appropriate?"

"He is a piece of Divinus Prime," said Mephiston. "A link to that wretched world. And something told me that a way back might be useful."

"Lord Mephiston," said Antros. "What convinced you to visit Divinus Prime? Lady Mariah is right – none of our campaigns in the Cronian Sector have come to anything. Every time we stop one civil war another two spring up in its place."

"Confessor Zin come here specifically to ask him to go," said Mariah. "He begged the Chief Librarian to discover what has become of the specific Cardinal World. Something about the loss of Divinus Prime has forced him to approach us for help."

"But the world has not been lost?" asked Antros.

Mephiston shook his head "Merely hidden." He waved them over to a circular desk at the back of the scriptorium. Its surface was unadorned but at a wave of Mephiston's hand it flickered into life, flooding the chamber with blue light and a swirl of stars. Mephiston pointed at a ghostly shadow near the centre of the sector map."I was intrigued by this phenomenon long before Zin's communiques arrived." He placed his hand over the strange anomaly. "It is impossible to contact Divinus Prime by any normal means. I felt the death agonies of entire choirs when they tried. And the imperial fleet could scour the Cronian Sector for centuries without finding anything. Even if I ignore the voice that has been calling me there, I find this anomaly interesting. It is clearly the work of whatever or whoever is behind all the other uprising and schisms." He closed his fist around the projection. "I only managed to project a sliver of my being, a simulacrum. I could not hold my place there for long, but I had enough time to perform the Second Rite of the Ensanguined. I mingled my blood with the flesh of Divinus Prime." He looked at the priest on the rack. "And brought a little of that flesh back with me."

"What have you learned from him?" asked Antros.

Mephiston shrugged. "Nothing. He has been like this since I dragged him through the warp." Mephiston stepped closer to the rack and examined the dials and gauges that punctured its brass frame. "But something in Zin's ramblings made me think Divinus Prime is worth further thought. The time had come to try again."

Mephiston summoned his personal chirurgeon over. The serf scuttled from the shadows, carried on a rippling skirt of needle-like legs. He was a walking collection of surgical devices arrayed around a few vestigial scraps of humanity. The man had been so heavily augmented that he looked more arachnid than human. His long segmented forelimbs clattered against the dials of the machine with no obvious result. Then he droned a few prayers before plunging a needle into the priests thigh.

Kohath slumped in his bonds, hanging limply from the metal frame.

"Is he dead?" asked Mariah, more irritated than concerned.

The chirurgeon shook his head, shaking an oily mane of cables. He had a round, whiskered face and wide, unblinking eyes, and as he prodded Kohath he rubbed some of his syringe-tipped fingers over his robes, fidgeting and nervous. "No. Lady Mariah," he replied his voice punctured by a series of moist clicking sounds. "That is not the case. I do not think that is the case. At least. At least. If it is the case. I do not think-"

Prester Kohath woke up with a scream. He jolted against his restraints, thrashing wildly, trying to free himself. His terrified stare was locked on Mephiston.

"Daemon!" he howled, spittle flying from his lips. "Warp spawn! Get away from me! In the name of the Throne!"

"Aphek," said Mephiston and the chirurgeon raised its forest of clicking limbs in to the air, before selecting a second syringe. The priest lashed out at the servitor as it approached, but Aphek dodged the blows and plunged the needle home.

Prester Kohath slumped again, but this time his eyes remained open and he ceased his screaming. The sedative drained the fury from his face, leaving the wry, cynical leer of a drunk. He studied Mephiston with derision and slurred "we are what our scars have made us." He laughed, as though enjoying his own wit. "we are born in blood."

The chirurgeon backed away surprised, shaking his head and making another series of clicking noises.

Mephiston stared at Prester Kohath as he continued laughing to himself. The Chief Librarian looked surprised by the words and they filled Mariah with an inexplicable chill. They were the words she had heard on Thermia as Mephiston butchered and burned. Antros looked from Mariah to Mephiston, and he seen something odd between them.

"He's still in there," said Mephiston trying to defuse the tension between him and Mariah. "Or at least part of him is. He's a child of Divinus Prime. His flesh knows the way home, even if his mind does not. Let me take a closer look at what he's seeing."

Mephiston drew his rune-inscribed force sword and Antros thought he was about to behead the man. But instead of swinging the sword. Mephiston dragged the tip of the blade across the man's cheek. Prester Kohath continued babbling drunkenly as Mephiston drew a small line of blood. Mephiston brought the sword tip to his mouth and licked the blood from the blade, shivering slightly as he swallowed. Then he gripped the sword in both hands, placed its point on the floor and nodded his head against the hilt, closing his eyes as he muttered an incantation.

The blade pulsed red, humming like a badly earthed electrical device. Then a breeze whipped along the bookcases and Pict displays, extinguishing the candles and leaving the cold blue light of the screens. After a few seconds they too began to fade, causing the rows of servo-scribes to stop writing and look up in surprise. Some of their hoods fell back and Antros saw that they had no faces – the fronts of their heads were as smooth and featureless as the backs. The last screen died but he could still sense the faceless servo-scribes in the dark twitching and straining towards him.

Prester Kohath continued muttering and laughing as blood trickled down his cheek and the scriptorium fell into darkness.

The sanguine glow from Vitarus was enough for Antros to discern the towering silhouettes of Mephiston and Mariah looming over the rack. The Chief Librarian still had his head resting against the handle of his sword and both Librarians were so motionless they could have been part of the architecture.

"The sky!" exclaimed Prester Kohath, ceasing his gibberish and speaking in a soft, quiet voice. "Peculiar, like nothing I've seen."

Antros recognised the odd mix of accents and realised Mephiston was now speaking through the priest. He had possessed him.

Prester Kohath looked directly at Antros, his eyes changing into a deep, bloody red. They flickered like votives in the dark as Mephiston continued speaking through his captive. "Zin's priests are butchering each other. Another pointless holy war. A genocidal schism over some subtle point of doctrine. there's a fortress. Volgatis. A convent. All the bloodshed stems from there. The ecclesiarchs are killing each other for possession of it." The man chained to the rack shook his head, confused. "Kohath doesn't even know why. None of them know why. Kohath just know the convent is divine – and that it must be saves. No, wait, he thinks it must not be saved. He does not know who to believe. He is -"

Kohath screamed again, jerking against his chains as the red light vanished from his eyes. His screams became ragged coughs and blood bubbled between his lips as he thrashed from side to side. He shouted "Born in Blood!" repeatedly until Aphek clattered forwards and sedated him again, sending him back into a fitful sleep.

The candles flickered back into life and Mephiston lifted his head from the handle of his sword. There was an intrigued expression on his face and Mariah knew that he had seen more than he had shared with them. "He's on the verge of collapse. I can push him no further."

"And what will you say to that baseborn oaf, Zin?" asked Mariah. "If we must endure another meeting with the cretin, can you at least disabuse him of his romantic ideas about Divinus Prime?"

Mephiston glanced up into the shadows, studying the ranks of gilt-edged books that lined the walls. "Take word to Captain Vatrenus, Mariah. When Confessor Zin lands, they should escort him to the Ostensorio. I will meet him there."

Mariah's blue eyes flashed in the half light. "The Ostensorio? Are you sure, Mephiston? It's ruined. One false step and the whole place might come down."

Mephiston glanced at the star chart that was still hovering over the desk. "The Ostensorio, Mariah."

Mariah hesitated briefly, then clanged her sword against her chest armour and marched from the scriptorium, leaving Antros with the Chief Librarian.

Without a word, Mephiston strode off down a vaulted passageway, heading towards his private chambers and clearly expecting Antros to follow. Antros felt a rush of elation. His private audience with Mephiston had finally come. He hurried after him, intrigued to know where they were headed. The Chief Librarian's inner sanctums were a mystery to all but an elect few of the Chapter's most senior officers.

The passageway broadened and the reached a dead end. Facing them was a tear-drop-shaped alcove, eight or nine feet tall, and set in the recess was a candlelit shrine. The shrine centred on a golden haloed death mask, fixed on the top of a marble plinth, glinting in the flickering light. Even in death, it was clear that the original wearer of the mask must have been strikingly beautiful. His expression was wonderfully serene, as though he had died in a state of oneness with the universe.

Mephiston lifted the golden mask and pressed it to his face. He only wore it for a second, but when he placed it back on its stand, his face was punctured with hundreds of tiny cuts.

As the mask clicked back into place, it rattled slightly and opened its eyes, revealing two featureless white orbs. Upon seeing Mephiston, the mask's tranquil expression vanished and the face crumbled into a bestial snarl, jolting on its base and forming its mouth into a silent howl.

Antros was about to ask for an explanation when the shrine dropped back into the wall, taking the tormented mask with it and leaving an open doorway onto nothing. Damp, cool air rushed out to meet them and Antros stepped closer, peering into the void.

"The Sepulcrum Maleficus," said Mephiston, stepping through the doorway and vanishing from sight.

Antros followed and found himself on a curved, metal stairway, wrought of interlocking metal plates, that plunged down in to the shadows. He could see very little, but the hulking form of Mephiston was just a few steps lower and he hurried after him.

Mephiston waved one of his hands, describing a lazy circle above his head. Lights sprang to life in answer to hid gesture – torches housed in winged, golden sconces, fixed to the walls of a tall, cylindrical atrium. The top of the atrium was so far away that Antros thought he could make out the stars of a distant night sky. Then he looked down and saw that there was no floor – the network of interlinked metal stairs hung over an abyss. The stairs were slowly rotating – vast hoops moving in stately, sweeping arcs, intersecting like the rings of an enormous orrery, but rather than carrying planets, the circular stairs carried elaborately sculpted sarcophagi, swinging them through the darkness like heavenly bodies.

"The Sepulcrum Maleficus?" whispered Antros. "I do not recall that name, my lord."

"My resting place, Lexicanium, and the resting place of my predecessors. Our place of communion, where we come to share thoughts. Although their gene-seed has been removed, their wisdom remains." As they passed the ivory caskets, Antros glimpsed names of great renown- long-dead heroes of the Librarius, their imposing sarcophagi decorated with ornate scrollwork, warded with liturgies and runes.

Mephiston paused beside one of the tombs and placed a hand on the cold ivory. "Chief Librarian Asterion,"he said. Antros sensed that the words were not directed at him but the dead hero in the coffin. It sounded like Mephiston was greeting him. As he continued on down the steps, Mephiston muttered, "He will not be here long." Again, Antros sensed he was talking to ghosts.

They reached a circular platform at the centre of the atrium. It was open to a sheer drop on all sides but at its centre there was a cluster of tall, claw-armed chairs, gathered around a gilded table.

Mephiston waved Antros to one of the chairs and, as Antros sat down, a man stepped out from one of the orbiting staircases and began removing Mephiston's armour. Mephiston had not had a chance to clean his battleplate since the fight in the Ostensorio and it was caked in blood and filth. As Mephiston's artificer worked, Antros watched the man with interest, wondering what kind of soul would inhabit such an austere place. He was dressed in thick crimson robes, embroidered with an intricate pattern of glyphs and runes, and he was clearly more than just a simple blood thrall. His frame was as powerful as one of the Blood Angels, when Antros caught a glimpse of the man's face, he saw that his eyes had been removed, leaving two puckered scars.

The blind artificer unclasped Mephiston's plates of ribbed armour, whispering prayers as he worked. The prayers were accompanied by the wheeze of hydraulics as he carefully removed the slabs of ceramite to be polished and venerated. As Mephiston's scarred, corpse-grey limbs were revealed, Antros noticed something odd, sections of the Chief Librarian's skin were shimmering and dark, as though consumed by a black fire. He was falling into shadow.

Mephiston saw Antros looking at his arm and frowned. "What have you learned?" he asked, covering his skin and signalling for the artificer to leave.

Antros was unsure if Mephiston was speaking to him or the corpses.

Mephiston gave him an unreadable look. "Regarding Divinus Prime. Did Mariah not pass on my order?"

Antros hesitated. How could a mere Lexicanium hope to advise Mephiston?

"You found nothing," said Mephiston.

"Very little," Antros admitted. "The Cronian Sector is so awash with warring sects that nothing is recorded with any diligence. The wars of Sanctitude seem so pointless it is not always clear who's fighting whom. Some of the cults have been isolated for so long that they barely follow the imperial creed. There is so much superstition. So much mythologising. It is hard to find concrete facts."

Mephiston, dressed now in a simple habit, began plucking books from the rooms single bookcase. It was beautifully made, a set of tall shelves, carved from the same ivory as the sarcophagi and holding an eclectic mix of military treaties and history books, as well as a few battered data-slates and auspexes. On the top shelf was a small shrine to the Angel Sanguinius, and another object that caught Antros' eye: an ugly little splinter of rubble, placed in a gold casket as though it were the most revered relic in the Librarium. Mephiston saw him looking at it but said nothing, signalling for him to continue."As you know, Divinus Prime is even more of an enigma than the other Cardinal Worlds in the sector," Antros continues. "It seems to me that the ecclesiarchs were hiding it long before this recent vanishing trick." He clicked a data-slate from his armour and scanned through the meagre notes on its screen. "Nobody is ever given permission to land. The last secular visit I could find mention of was thirteen centuries ago." He peered at the data-slate. "The Terran poet, Pindarus."

Mephiston paused at the mention of the poet, mouthed a few stanzas of his work, then continued studying his book.

"There was nothing in any of the usual texts," said Antros.

Mephiston nodded.

"But I did find one morsel of information."

Mephiston looked up, surprised.

"It was very little just the briefest of mentions in some old breviaries. Apparently, the man who acts as planetary governor is a senior priest called Arch-Cardinal Dravus. He has a rather antiquated title – the lord-ministrant proconsul of Divinus Prim. He's the head of an imperial cult called the Children of the Vow." He shook his head, scrolling through the notes again. "I could find no mention of that cult anywhere else. It seems to have been deliberately obscured."

Mephiston stared at Antros in silence. Then rose from his chair and returned to the bookshelves. "The Children of the Vow" he muttered, pulling another book down and flicking through the pages. "That's it," he said, with surprising urgency. "The Vow. How did I miss that?"

Mephiston spent the next ten minutes reading intently and speaking under his breath in languages Antros could not understand. It sounded like a jumble of different tongues, as though many people were speaking at once. Antros wondered if he was expected to leave. He rose to go and then paused at the bottom of the steps.

"My lord," he said. "In the Ostensorio..."

Mephiston continued staring at the book and replied in vague, distracted tones. "You are no longer a neophyte, Antros. You will witness many such things in years to come."

"I understand. But I was not talking about the things that followed you. When you returned to the Librarium you said something, in Mariah's mind, just before they attacked. You talked about finding an answer. What did you mean by that? An answer to what?" He hesitated aware that such questions might be another break with protocol.

Mephiston looked up at and stared at Antros. Black flames shimmered across his palms, throwing odd shadows across his face. "What I say in Mariah's head is personal, you had no right spying in her mind, not even Lord Rhacelus is daring enough to try that!" he said with an annoyed expression on his face.

The conversation both excited and troubled Antros. Had he said something wrong? Or had he impressed his lord in some way? He had never heard of Mephiston confiding in any other Lexicani like this, but it felt more like a trial than an honour – as though the Chief Librarian were drawing him close through doubt rather than trust. He could not tell whether this conversation was leading to unexpected promotion or unexpected death.

"The battle at the pit left me with unanswered questions," Mephiston said "as I'm sure it did Mariah. But perhaps the devout Confessor Zin has given me an answer, in the form of Divinus Prime."

"You mean to go back?" Antros said.

"I do and I do not intend to go alone."

"Confessor Zin would do anything to stop you returning."

"He would do anything to find Divinus Prime and his choice of guides is limited," Mephiston glanced at the shrine to the Angel. "I have anchored my soul to that world. The transmigration between realities will be faster and more permanent. I have the skill to do what lesser minds would consider impossible. I will cross the immaterium."

He raised one of his hands and a sphere of dust formed above his palm. Antros lent closer as the dust became a planet, turning slowly in the void. It was caged by a spiral of serpentine clouds but looked otherwise normal. The miniature world was so accurately drawn from Mephiston's memory that he could even make out its oceans and continents.

"Zin is either lying or being lied to. Someone has deliberately hidden Divinus Prime from him. That much is plain. There is an architecture to this mystery, a design."

He waved his hand and the image dissolved. "It is one of the things that intrigued me about the place. I had already consulted with the Chapter Council and petitioned Commander Dante for guidance. I need to..." He paused, and Antros glimpsed a flicker of emotion in his eyes – hunger perhaps. "I cannot place the source of these visions. I do not know who is calling to me. But I am sure of this – there are things on Divinus Prime too precious to be simply revered."

Antros was about to reply when Mephiston waved him away.

"Return to your tower, Lexicanium. Set your scholars to work. Tell me who they are, these Children of the Vow."


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

Librarium Sagrestia, Arx Angelicum, Baal.

A week had passed since Mephiston's return from Divinus Prime and the subsequent destruction of the Ostensorio. Lexicanium Antros had spent every moment attempting to fulfil the Chief Librarian's request. He had unearthed dozens of volumes concerning the shrine worlds of the Cronian Sector and the imperial cults that held sway there. Despite earlier doubts about his most senior serf, Scholiast Ghor, she had proven useful. Ghor had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the books stored in the Orbicular Tower, whereas, for Antros, much of his new demesne was still a mystery. And yet, for all their searching, they had failed to unearth another mention of the Children of the Vow.

On this particular morning he found Ghor walking through the damask-lined halls of the Orbicular Tower, talking earnestly with some of the rubricators. Her tall, emaciated frame dwarfed the other scribes and they resembled a kind of chattering train, billowing in her wake as passed by the thick, embroidered drapes that covered the walls.

At the sight of Antros, the junior scribes bowed awkwardly ans scurried away, leaving Dimitra to face him alone. She looked as ferociously gaunt as ever, eyes sunk deep in their dark sockets and skin like old vellum. She greeted him with a slow, respectful bow. "Lexicanium," she said. She looked ashamed as she passed a pile of books in to his hands. "These are the final few breviaries that speak of Divinus Prime. There is no mention of a vow in any of them."

He shook his head. "And our time is up. The Chief Librarian means to return to Divinus Prime and I will be travelling with him."

Dimitra glanced nervously at him. "My lord, I heard rumours of what happened in the Ostensorio. The Chief Librarian has immense power at his command, I understand that, but do you think such methods of transportation are really -?"

Antros halted her question with a warning glance. "The Chief Librarian sees all ends," he said firmly.

"The Chief Librarian sees all ends," she echoes, but the concern remained in her ink-dark eyes.

"Oh," she said, "there was something odd about those books that I thought I should mention. It may be nothing, but there was a code – a kind of cryptograph that was common to all of them." She took one of the books back and opened it, tracing her finger over the faded print. "Some of the illuminated capitals feature this strange symbol," she said. "Can you see? A crossbar of some kind or an upside down T."

Antros nodded. "I see it."

"Well the odd thing is that if you take the marked capitals and read them in reverse order, they seem to spell a name. It sounds like the name of a relic or a weapon, but it is not mentioned anywhere else."

"What is the name?"

She gave him a hopeful look. "The Blade Petrific. Have you heard of such a thing?"

She looked disappointed as Antros shook his head.

Dimitra frowned and handed him the book. "No, nor I. And it is not mentioned in the other breviaries. There is an impressive cloud of secrecy around Divinus Prime. I have never seen anything quite like it." She nodded at the crumbling books. I hope you find whatever they are hiding."

"who?"

"The ecclesiarchs. I presume they are hiding something from the Chief Librarian."

Antros laughed, his booming tones disrupting the quiet industry that surrounded them. The scholars and scribes visible through every archway ceased their copying looked up, stealing a glimpse of their lord.

"I do not believe it is possible to hide anything from the Chief Librarian," he said. "I would not profess to know what game he's playing with the Adeptus Ministorum, but I know who holds all the cards."

Dimitra's angular features were briefly softened by a smile."Agreed." She bowed and made to leave, then paused "My lord," she said.

He nodded for her to continue.

She shook her head, embarrassed, and seemed to regret speaking, then she steeled herself and said. "I have been asked questions about you."

"Questions? By whom?"

She licked her thin lips and glanced over her shoulder before continuing in hushed tones "Servants of the Chief Librarian's equerry."

Antros felt a rush of indignation as he sensed that she was impugning Mariah. "I have no time for gossip, Scholiast Ghor."

She looked pained and bowed again. "Forgive me," she said, backing away into the shadows.

Antros stood there for a while, scowling as he watched her go. Then he shook his head and looked around, watching his servants working, relishing the sense of endless progress. Every word, every deed they copied into the Chapter's records, pushed the boundaries of their understanding. He savoured the aroma of the place: ink and old paper, the smell of wisdom. The Librarium might seem to an outsider at least, to be quiet backwater of their fortress-monastery, but Antros felt the power of their work. Knowledge was their most potent weapon and all around him it was being honed by a legion of fearless, tireless minds.

Even Dimitra's parting words could do nothing to dampen his mood. In the days since his meeting with Mephiston, he had quashed his fears and now felt a growing certainty he was being groomed for some kind of advancement. This must be why questions were being asked about him. He always felt that he was destined for a role of some significance and the more he thought about it, the more sure he was that Mephiston was about to recommend him for a senior position in one of the Chapter's battle companies. He strode back through the scriptoria and began climbing the stairs that swept out in long, lazy arcs around the outside of the Orbicular Tower, orbiting the lichened spheres like a wind-lashed pennant. The Librarium Sagrestia was spread out beneath him, a shadowy mass of crypts, colonnades and reliquaries, scattered with so many pinpricks of light that he felt like a god, looking down on the distant firmament. He knew the lights were just windows into the cells of scribes and rubricators, but from up here they looked like stars and, above them, shimmering like comets, mechanised braziers drifted by, lighting the routes from one section of the Librarium to another. Antros had spent almost his entire life beneath these distant barrel vaults, gazing on these firefly lights. He gripped the rail as he realised how close he was to fulfilling his dream. He could almost see the victories he would claim once Mephiston attached him to a battle company.

A sound broke his reverie and he looked up the steps towards his private chambers. His santuario was perched at the very top of the tower and uninvited guests were not welcome. But he was sure he heard the door closing.

He pounded up the stairs and found, to his outrage, that the door to the santuario was ajar.

Antros entered the central chamber, scouring it for signs of damage of theft. Nothing had been moved. The Talismans and amulets covered his workbenches, in various states of repair, along with all the other esoteric devices he had inherited from the old master of the Orbicular Tower: bestial, alien skulls, archaic components of antique weapons, pale, foetal things preserved in glass weights, astrolabes, orreries and the myriad other tools of scrying and prophesising. This bewildering collection of arcana was propped up on and surrounded by heaps of books. Some were mildewed, leather-bound relics, while others were newly printed treaties, the ink still gleaming on their thick, unbound pages. A circular scrying glass covered most of one wall, its oily, black surface reflecting nothing, even when Antros passed before it, and the rest of the was was draped in thick, richly decorated tapestries.

A first glance might have given the impression that such luxurious wall coverings were unbecoming for one of the Blood Angels. On closer inspection, they were revealed to be purely functional. They were intricately embroidered with celestial maps and star charts, crowded with an impenetrable mass of astronomical and astrological information – galaxies and gods whirled around each other, dancing through the thick weave, picked out of the deep scarlet dye in glittering golden thread.

The cornucopia of the beautiful and the grotesque was lit by the warm light of a gas lamp, hissing quietly in the corner of the room, suspended in the air on an ornate, brass, anti-grav platform. Antros knew that he should have found this wealth of relics exciting, but he could only think of it as his cage. He had spent his whole life striving for a change to serve the God-Emperor in battle, to unleash all the fury that burned in his soul, and now it seemed so close he was eager to be away.

He paused. Why was the lamp lit?

"Who's in here?" There was no need to call out. The santuario only consisted a few small rooms.

"Forgive me," said a voice from behind him. "I did not mean to alarm you."

The condescending tone was familiar and Antros knew it was Lady Mariah before he even turned to face her. The middle-aged librarian was sitting in a gloomy corner, almost hidden apart from her Blue eyes that glinted in the dark, reflecting the lamp light. She lent forward and, as her face was revealed, Antros saw that her expression was particularly hostile. "What happened on Thermia?" Antros asked.

Antros' anger had vanished at the sight of his former instructor, but that unexpected question on made her hostility worse. "Antros," she replies "The battle reports were submitted to the Chapter archivists weeks ago"

"And your personal report, Mariah? Has that been submitted?"

Mariah had never heard Antros speak to her like that before, but now she was getting angry.

"I submitted my notes to lord Mephiston," she replied, refusing to back down.

"And what did you write? What happened between you and the Chief Librarian?"

Antros walked towards Mariah, her anger growing darker as he came so close that he was nose to nose with her.

Mariah shook her head. It went against all her training, but she would not discuss this with Antros. The visions she had shared with Mephiston were not something she would describe out loud, even if she could. They were a secret she shared with the Chief Librarian.

Antros stared at her closely and Mariah could feel the Lexicanium's mind snaking around the edges of her thoughts.

Mariah knew enough to shield her mind from such casual inspection.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter Eight

The Chemic Spheres, Arx Angelicum, Baal.

Antros thought that this time he might have the chance to explore the Diurnal Vault in more detail, but Mariah did not give him time to pause. The Librarian had barely spoken as she led him away from the Orbicular Tower, marching purposefully through the endless dusk of the Librarium to Mephiston's private chambers. After approaching the star-fuelled colossus at the centre of the vaults – the black-and-crimson statue of the Angel – Mariah had led Antros between its feet, down passed rows of sentries and gun-servitors into a series of subterranean passageways. The damp, mossy crypts looked to be as old as the undercroft beneath the Carceri Arcanum and the architecture was of a similar style, but Antros had never seen this particular corner of the Librarium before. As Mariah led him deeper beneath ground, the air grew oddly humid and water began to drip from Antros' battleplate, edging the greaves and vambraces with droplets that glinted in the torchlight.

As the chamber grew darker and warmer, Antros realised that they were alone. No sentries watched over the thick, rockcrete doors, but they where guarded in other ways. At each doorway Mariah mouthed a few silent words and drew in the air with her finger. As she did, a rune appeared in the centre of the door and it slid open with a hiss of hydraulics.

They reached a stone door that was larger and more ornate than the previous ones. It looked to be even more ancient than the surrounding crypts. The images sculpted into the marble had been rendered indistinct by countless years of erosion. Only one aspect of its design has survived. At its centre were two characters: IX.

Standing on either side of the door was a black robed figure. They were giants, as tall as Antros and Mariah, and it was clear from their hulking, inhuman frames that they were Blood Angels. They wore no armour, but their hands were resting on the winged pommels of huge, two-handed swords, the blades of which were planted in the ground between their feet. Their heads were bowed but Antros caught a flash of metal in their deep hoods and realised they were wearing gold masks.

Mariah paid them no heed, placing her palm on the two numerals sculpted in the centre of the door. The door swung back with a groan of hinges and light flooded out to greet them. They walked on, past the sentries and, as he passed by, Antros had the odd sensation that their heads were swivelling, owl-like behind their gold masks, watching him as he passed. He looked back and saw that their heads had not moved, but he could not rid himself of the idea.

"The Chemic Spheres," said Mariah, calling Antros' thoughts back to the blinding light ahead of them.

Before them was an ivory dome, caged by elegant, golden struts and buttresses. It burned with the power of the star trapped in the vaults above. There were rune-inscribed cables embedded in the girders, feeding Idalia's furious energy down into the dome's walls. The ivory surface was opaque, so he could see nothing within it and it shone so brightly that he could not see what surrounded it.

"What is this?" asked Antros, impressed by the majesty of the structure.

"A prison," replied Mariah. "A prison within prisons, strong enough to contain the chapter's most dangerous weapon." She looked hard at Antros. "It takes the power of a sun to contain the soul incarcerated in here."

Antros felt another rush of excitement. How many Lexicani had been here? He looked around at Mariah, but the old warrior ignored him, scratching her blond hair thoughtfully as she studied the ivory wall before them. This close, Antros could see that the surface was not as featureless as it first appeared, but engraved with an intricate pattern of tiny numbers.

Mariah unclipped a glass syringe from her armour. It was full of crimson liquid and as Mariah held it up in to the sphere's light, Antros saw shapes suspended in it. He watched, fascinated, as Mariah pushed the needle into the wall of the sphere. The surface gave a little as though it were flesh not ivory, and Mariah slowly injected the red liquid.

At first, nothing happened. Antros was just about to ask for an explanation when a web of thin red lines spread out from the needle tip. The crimson tracery crawled and trickled, like paint blown by a child. As the lines rippled over the ivory they formed a blood-red rectangle, several feet taller than the two Librarians.

"You remember what I said?" asked Mariah, glaring at Antros.

"Of course," replied Antros, but he was only half listening- he was focusing all his thoughts oh the dazzling sphere, trying furiously to see a glimpse of what lay beyond the red door. His mind touched on something that made his recoil. He felt, rather than saw, a snapshot of horrific violence.

Mariah looked at him in surprise. "You saw something."

Antros shook his head. "Just a feeling," he muttered.

Mariah was clearly puzzled but said no more, returning her attention to the doorway. He muttered a string of words but Antros only caught two of them – it sounded like 'dark heir' or 'dark air'.

Then Mariah gave Antros a brief nod, withdrew the needle and slipped into the crimson portal, vanishing from view.

Antros followed, his hands raised before him, expecting to slam against the wall of the sphere. He did not, and found himself in near-total darkness. The only light came from Mariah's crimson and black armour as she turned to face Antros. "Remember," she said, before muttering another series of words and vanishing from view a second time.

Antros stepped after her then halted, blinded by light and noise. He crouched low, drawing his pistol. He and Mariah were standing on the ruins of a colossal building. Flames and smoke covered shattered parapets and the ground was shaking, as though the world were in the grip of a violent fever. There was a dull hammer blow of artillery and the chemical sky was slashed into strange geometry by rocket trails and lines of tracer fire. Beyond the ruins there was a great mountain of flames, rolling majestically across.

Mariah laughed. "No need for that," she said, nodding at Antros' pistol. "We are neither here nor then." She clambered over the face of a decapitated statue and waved for Antros to follow.

Despite Mariah's words, Antros could not help flinching as ordnance pounded and cracked all around him. A shell landed nearby, obliterating a grand archway and hurling debris in all directions. Antros held his hands before his face as a tank-sized piece of rubble flew towards him. The masonry passed straight through him and crashed down several feet away. He looked down at his battleplate and saw it was unmarked.

Intrigued, he tried pushing his foot through the rocks he was standing on and found that he could. His boot passed through the ground like water. He was an apparition.

"The illusion mirrors real-world physics," explained Mariah as she continued climbing across the ruins. "It's easier for your mind to cope with this way. We could just as easily swim through these stones but our minds have an annoying fondness for the inconveniences of the materium, so they let us think we need to crawl and clamber through a 'real' Hades Hive."

"Hades Hive?" exclaimed Antros, looking up at the shattered spires that surrounded them. He suddenly recognised the ruins that were silhouetted against the war-torn sky. The wars for Armageddon were legendary for their brutality and Hades Hive in particular had significance for the Blood Angels Chapter. "Why are we at Hades Hive?" he cried, struggling to be heard over the explosions and clatter of collapsing walls.

"Listen, neophyte," replied Mariah, as Antros hurried to catch up with her. "I told you we are not there nor then; we are on Baal, beneath the Diurnal Vault, shouting like idiots into the silence of the Chemic Sphere."

They crested a fallen buttress and found a bloodbath. Scattered in a crater below them were corpses of dozens of xenos monsters – massive brutish greenskins, clad in crudely wrought plates of armour and clutching a scrapyard of jerry-built weapons. Their low-slung heads had a boar-like bestiality, and their enormous jaws were jammed with tusks. If any of them had been alive, they would have made a terrifying sight. As it was, they were gutted and bleeding, gathering flies as their spilled viscera slowly baked in the sun.

Sitting on a toppled pillar, clutching one of the greenskins' hearts, was a peculiar sight. It was a Blood Angel dressed in the black of the Death Company. The ceremonial armour, daubed with a red X, clearly marked him out as one of those brave brothers who had lost his mind to the gene curse. The berserkers of the Death Company could only serve the Chapter by making their deaths as costly as possible. Sitting calmly on a rock was not possible for such damned souls – they raged, screamed and killed until they made their final sacrifice. Then Antros felt a flood of understanding as he saw the Blood Angel's face. It was Mephiston, but Mephiston as he must once have been – as physically perfect as any other Blood Angel.

"Calistarius," muttered Antros. This was the moment of Mephiston's rebirth.

From his vantage point on the buttress, Antros could see dozens more greenskins loping through the ruins towards the spot where Calistarius was seated. He was about to call out, when Mariah placed a hand on his arm and shook her head. "Remember your training Lexicanium," she said, nodding to the pouches at Antros' belt. "Record and illuminate, brother, record and illuminate."

Antros shook his head, confused. The whole situation was surreal, but he did as he was ordered, taking out his mnemonic stylus and tablet and beginning to take notes.

"You said this was a prison," he said, whispering, even though he knew the greenskins could not hear him.

Mariah nodded. "Mephiston created the Chemic Spheres to imprison our most dangerous weapon – himself. He needed a safe place to explore what he is."

"What he is?" Antros was struggling to follow.

Mariah nodded at the approaching greenskins. "Watch and record. Talk later."

He tried not to react as the greenskins picked up their pace, smelling the presence of Calistarius. They swaggered across the rubble, hulking and ape-like as they belched out commands in the disgusting guttural language of their kind. The leader was a head taller than the others and clad in a full-body suit of rusting, jagged metal. Even its enormous head was hidden inside a grille-fronted helmet, hammered together from mismatched plates of armour. It looked more machine than ork, splintering slabs of rockcrete under its square, metal boots as it smashed through walls and piles of razor wire. A flame gun was fixed to it left arm, dripping promethium, and the other arm ended in a giant, mechanised claw. At the sight of Calistarius it bellowed with pleasure, pointing its flamer at him and turned the crater into a lake of fire.

When the flames cleared, Calistarius was still seated, calmly studying the now blackened heart he was holding. He glanced up at the circle of greenskins that were forming around him but showed no sign of lifting the force sword that was lying across his lap.

The leader of the greenskins raised its metal claw and roared again, spraying blood and spit through the mesh of its helmet. The rest of the greenskins swept forwards, flooding the crater with their armour-clad bulk.

At the last possible moment, Calistarius stood and stepped to one side, swinging his sword as he moved and decapitating the first ork to reach him. The movement was so easy and fluid that it seemed more like dancing than fighting.

The now headless monster crashed into the wall of the crater, tearing away another hunk of granite.

The orks tried to correct their charge but several of them slammed in to the spot that Calistarius had just vacated and the rest of them howled in frustration as they saw that he had moved again. Calistarius had bounded over a series of burned-out tank chassis and leapt at the orks' leader.

The monster tried to spin and face him, but its heavy armour made it slow and, before it could aim its weapon, Calistarius dropped from the sky and hammered his sword blade down through the grill of its helmet. As the blade struck home it erupted into crimson fire and the ork's head detonated in a plume of blood mist.

As the creature collapsed to the ground, Calistarius pulled his sparking sword free, placed his boot on the ork's corpse and used it as a springboard for another leap. As he passed over the heads of the mob below, they loosed a barrage of gunfire, but Calistarius merged with the ceiling of black fumes and vanished from sight, before reappearing back on the rock were he had started.

"There are too many," hissed Antros, drawing Mariah's attention to the huge mobs of greenskins that were now rushing towards the crater, drawn by the flames and gunfire.

"That's the point," replied Mariah, nodding at Antros' stylus.

"Record and illuminate."

Antros looked back to the crater and saw that Calistarius was now standing on the broken pillar, his sword raised and his plasma pistol drawn in readiness as the wave of orks charged.

Lines of blue plasma cut through the smoke, slamming into the heavily armoured orks sending them sprawling onto their backs. Calistarius fired with preternatural speed, filling the crater with light and broken bodies. The orks crashed over the lip of the crater in ever grater numbers, crushing each other in their kill frenzy, and finally, Calistarius' pistol sparked and died, over heated by such a furious barrage of shots. He hurled it aside and stepped casually forward to meet them with his blade, slashing, thrusting and parrying with such languid ease that he might have been back on Baal in a training cage.

By now the crater was heaped with greenskin dead and they were gradually forcing Calistarius back with their sheer numbers, grunting and roaring as they tried to bring him down.

Still showing no sign of alarm, Calistarius took a step back, grabbed his sword in both hands and stabbed the flaming blade down into the ground. Lines of fire splayed out beneath the orks' feet and, with a series of moist tearing sounds, their bodies began to burst open, exploding in a shower of boiling blood. The spitting, steaming liquid filled the air as row after row of the greenskins exploded inside their plate armour.

All the greenskins near tom Calistarius collapsed in ruptured mounds, adding to the heaps of dead. Calistarius wrenched his force sword free and waded through the gore towards the survivors.

"Mariah," hissed Antros, as he saw what Calistarius could not. As Mephiston prepared to finish off the rest of the orks, one of the fallen orks behind had risen from the corpses and aimed an odd-looking pistol at him.

Mariah shook her head, so Antros watch in impotent horror as the pistol flashed blue and fired.

Calistarius had already begun killing the rest of the orks, but he seemed to sense the shot before it was fired, dodging to one side. His foresight stopped the blow taking his head off but it still impacted with his shoulder with a fierce blue flash, hurling him through the air and slamming him into the base of a toppled pillar. He reached out towards the ork with his fingers splayed and the monster arched in pain, before collapsing into a sack of broken bones and pulverised flesh.

Another ork had taken advantage of the distraction to fire at Calistarius, this time with a big, two handed rocked launcher. To fire a weapon like that at such short range was nothing short of suicidal. The crater vanished in a column of dust and whistling shrapnel.

When the dust cleared, Antros saw that Calistarius had been crushed into the masonry, like a toy pressed into wed clay. His black armour was glowing with embers and scorch marks and his force sword had been warped out of shape, the blade twisted in to a useless mass of blunted metal.

Calistarius wrenched himself out of the rock and shook the dust from his face. The light show had drawn an even bigger crowd. Hundreds of greenskins were now gathering round the crater, grinning with their huge, tusk-crammed jaws and training a forest of guns on the dust-shrouded Space marine Below them.

Calistarius paused in shock, not at the numbers of greenskins, but at the sight of his ruined sword.

Mariah gasped in pain as her head filled with an unbelievable rage.

Antros grabbed her before she fell, staring at her.

"What-?" she started to ask, but at that moment, a deafening howl tore through the air, drowning out even the sound of artillery and aircraft.

The ruins fell into shadow, as though something had passed in front of the sun and Mariah looked down into the crater to see that the sound was coming from Calistarius just as she had seen on Thermia V, Calistarius had been transformed by an uncontrollable rage. He raised his hands towards the sky as though beseeching the clouds for aid, howling all the while.

All Mariah could do was watch in awe as the heavens responded to Calistarius' summons. The wheeling, toxic clouds over head formed in to mountainous shards of grey rock and dropped from the sky.

Mariah shielded her face as the colossal spearheads slammed into the ruined city. They hit with a seismic impact, collapsing the few remaining towers and sending up new mountains of dust and fire. Mariah climbed the wing of a broken statue and looked out over Hades Hive. Much of the view was obscured by the plumes of dust and smoke, but in the gaps he saw that, in every direction, the rain of mountains was obliterating the ork clans. The blows were not discriminating between ork and human, though. She saw entire columns of imperial armour vanish beneath the falling rocks and squadrons of Stormraven gunships smashed from the air.

As this atrocity grew in fury, Calistarius' roar grew louder.

There was now a note of horror mixed in with the rage and, as Calistarius howled at the boiling sky, Mariah felt alien thoughts blossoming in her mind. It was Calistarius' agony. Now! Said a voice in her head. Now!

The noises inside Mariah's head merged with the cacophony outside, until she could take no more. She joined her howl to Calistarius'. Then as suddenly as it arrived the scene was gone. Mariah stumbled, but before she hit the ground Antros grabbed her, a few minutes after Mephiston grabbed her as well, then they both took her to a chair that had appeared in the sphere.

"Are you ok?" asked Antros, but got no reply from her.

Mephiston gave Antros a look that said go and sit down and let me deal with this, it was like he knew what was happening to Mariah like this had happened before.

+Mariah are you ok?+ Mephiston asked her in her head.

+Yeah I am ok. Just give me half an hour to an hour and I will be back to normal again,+ she replied back in a whisper.

While they were waiting for Mariah, Mephiston and Antros were talking.

"Do not worry, Lexicanium, this is what happens to her when she goes through my line. I do not expect you to understand how hard this is for her," Mephiston said while watching Mariah.

"But why does this happen to her?" asked Antros.

"I do not know," replied Mephiston. "But if I had to guess, she knew Calistarius before he died and I was born."

An hour later Mariah straightened herself off and looked over at Antros and smiled slightly, then she looked to Mephiston.

+Do not worry I will not say anything to him,+ she said into Mephiston's mind.

+Neither will I. What is going on between us is our secret to bare alone.+ Mephiston said back into her mind.

+Yes I know it is our secret to bare alone. Antros can not be trusted he is to close to figuring out our secret, he has already questioned me again,+ she muttered back to him.

+Maybe we can find the answer on Divinus Prime. Just know Mariah whatever happens Antros will get what is coming to him, and know that I love you,+ he said to her.

+I know. And I love you 2,+ she replied.


	9. Chapter 9

CHAPTER NINE

Kobella, Divinus Prime.

Captain Hesbon grinned as a tide of hands held him aloft. As he rose over the heads of the crowd, he felt as though their cheers were carrying him. The victory songs were almost loud enough to drown out the screams of the wounded. Around him, cowed and broken, kneeled the great bastion of Kobella. The final obstacle between the Enlightened and Volgatis had been conquered, its ancient gates torn down and its guns silenced. His dragoons had fought for twelve days, sustaining their worst losses since the start of the crusade, but the sight of those broken gates made it all worthwhile. Beyond them, outside the city, the Great East Road was lined with thousands of soldiers, its ancient flagstones hidden by a river of golden cuirasses and smiling, exhausted faces. As one, the Enlightened roared their refrain: For the Emperor!

Those that could get near enough snatched at Hesbon's robes, hoping to catch a piece of divinity in their Captain's threadbare cloth. After four decades of devotion, Hesbon had finally caught then attention of his god. No, he thought, trying to crush his pride, they had all caught the attention of the God-Emperor. "I may have given the order," he cried, trying to show some humility, "but it was your courage that smashed the gates!" However hard he tried though, he could not suppress his proud grin. As the victorious army passed Hesbon over their heads, crying out his name, he started to laugh. The Enlightened poured into Kobella; they trampled over the corpses of its defenders. Their former brothers lay in smouldering heaps, torn apart by the guns of the dragoons. The flails and chainswords of the Frateris Militia were scattered across the ground, laying next to the corpses of their previous owners. With the battle over, and the threat gone, the dead militiamen made a pathetic sight. Hesbon felt a flash of pity, but quickly crushed it. The militia had been offered the same truths as the rest of Divinus Prime and they had refused to see the Emperor's light. It was a tragic end but he hoped that in death they might have seen the truth of their heresy and found forgiveness.

As the dragoons filed into the great square, Hesbon bellowed orders, sending men clambering over the shattered statues and temples to take up positions in the rubble, training their guns on the avenues that led deeper into Kobella's heart. The gates may have fallen but there was still hard, bloody work ahead of them. Hesbon lay back on his bed of hands and savoured the moment. The sky was draped with low, fast-moving clouds and Hesbon, to his shame, found this a relief. Unlike the dead militiamen, he never doubted the sanctity of the Miracle, the incredible transformation of the heavens, but he had also never got used to looking at it.

As they crossed the square Hesbon heard cruel laughter mingled with the cheers and battle-cries. A few moments later, he saw the source. One of the heretics was still alive, trapped at the edge of the square as Hesbon's dragoons surrounded her. She was cowering in the wreckage of a gun emplacement. It had toppled from the walls during the battle and now lay like a slain beast in the centre of the mob. There was a crater full of burned-out tanks behind the emplacement and the heretic had clearly been taking shelter in the jagged shards of metal. She was screaming and howling in fear as the Enlightened hurled lit brands at her, and some of the surrounded ruins were already catching. It would not be long before she was engulfed in flames.

Hesbon's grin faded as he realised that the heretic was only a girl, fifteen years old at most and completely unarmed.

"Wait!" he cried. "We're not animals!"

The noise of the crowd drowned him out, so he climbed to his feet and stood, swaying precariously on the heads and hands of those carrying him.

"Stop!" he roared.

A wave of surprised silence passed through the crowd and the victorious solders turned to face Hesbon.

His nerve almost failed as he saw the suspicion and anger in the faces of his men. They were like hounds, hauled back from the kill. His doubt was fleeting. He considered what the Unbegotten Prince would do in the face of such barbarism. With a rush of renewed outrage, he cried out again. "Brothers! This is not worthy of us, it is not worthy of the Emperor. Do not lower yourselves to the level of these misguided souls. They are stumbling in the shadows of misbelief, but we are not. We are Enlightened. Think of all we have been taught."

"These people are damned!" roared a nearby dragoon. He pointed his lasrifle at the sky. "They denied the Miracle!"

"They denied the Prince!" yelled another.

"Would you let her rejoin her brothers?" cried another. "And give her another go at killing us"

The crowd roared out in agreement, hammering guns against breastplates and hurling rubble at the girl.

Captain Hesbon cried out another order to stop but it was impossible to be heard over the din of the mob. Anger filled his mind. "Are we no better than the fools we've slain?" he cried, but they did not hear. The crowd were still holding him aloft, but the grips were harder now, more aggressive.

He looked around the crowd and saw that some of his men had fallen back, their face full of shame, but others had started to push towards him through the press of bodies, outraged, savage curses on their lips and guns raised. They were still full of bloodlust after a battle that had been hard won. Captain Hesbon struggles to free himself but, as the crowd grew more frenzied, the hands gripping him locked even tighter, presenting him to the approaching soldiers like an offering.

"Damn you!" he yelled, trying to draw his sword, but finding that he could not. "I will have you shot for this!"

Light flooded the square.

The blaze was so bright that it momentarily blinded anyone facing the shattered city gates. It was a divine host, sculpted from sunlight: patrician lions, sagacious dragons and hundreds of soaring eagles. All there and yet not there. None of them cast shadows and the landscape beyond was visible through their incandescent flesh. Above the host were dozens of haloed saints, their wings spread and their swords raised to the heavens. Yet, as magnificent as these creatures were, every eye in the courtyard was fixed on the figure riding before them. The Unbegotten Prince was on a huge, winding serpent- a truly monstrous creature, unlike anything Hesbon had seen before. It was fifty feet long, sported vast, glittering wings and had the head of an enormous eagle. But Hesbon's eyes skipped over the winged snake and fixed on its rider. The Unbegotten Prince was dressed in gleaming white-and-gold battleplate. The layered ceramite was filigreed and engraved with such intricate designs that it glittered as he raised his sword to the clouds. His helmet was at his belt and his waist-length black hair was free to tumble across his power armour, in sharp contrast to his gleaming white cuirass. The Prince's face was lit from beneath by cold blue light, shining from a fist sized sapphire embedded in the centre of his chest armour. He was a holy vision, shimmering in the heat haze – a star, fallen from the heavens and given human form. The Emperors' prophet burned bright, aflame with divine wisdom.

Faced with this dazzling avatar of their glorious prophet, the regiments of dragoons dropped to their knees, prostrating themselves. It was as though the Emperor himself were riding towards them on the back of a mythical beast. As the prophet approached, the light dimmed and the spectral shaped melted away, leaving just the prince on his winged steed. Even when the light had stopped blazing from his skin, he looked utterly divine. The prince pointed the tip of his sword from head to head until finally Hesbon realised, to his amazement, that it was pointed at him.

"What would you have us do with unbelievers, Captain Hesbon?" The prince's clear, musical voice rang out through the ruins. "Stand brother, and share your thoughts."

The city fell silent as Hesbon climbed, with some difficulty to his feet. He looked around and saw the surreal sight of his entire army on it knees. A few of his braver men dared to look up, but most kept their heads to the ground.

The Unbegotten Prince approached, the enormous mass of the serpent crushing rubble like leaves.

Hesbon felt even more terrified than when he had faced the mob.

"My lord," he said "If I have offended you in any way, I never meant to-"

"Blasphemers!" cried a voice from the ruins and a series of rockets screamed through the air, tearing chunks from the masonry near the prince, shrouding his serpent steed in dust.

Hesbon drew his laspistol and looked back, cursing his hubris. The square was clearly not secure. With a series of furious hand gestures he ordered the Enlightened into action. They leapt to their feet with a clatter of boots and armour. Some formed a protective circle around the prince while others raised their lasweapons and took up defensive positions in doorways and windows, scouring the streets for signs of gunman.

When the dust cleared, Hesbon saw that the Unbegotten Prince had not moved. He was still sitting calmly and smiling. Then he raised his sword to the black bellied clouds and whispered a prayer.

An electric charge rippled through the air and a breeze whipped up from nowhere, creating eddies and whorls in the dust. Captain Hesbon gasped as he felt the prince's divine presence moving through the city. He saw the same wonder in the faces of the guards crouched next to him.

"The Emperor is with us," he whispered, tears forming in his eyes. The storm around the prince grew more powerful as he continued to prey, and a tornado started to form around him, whipping up the clouds over head.

Finally, the force grew so powerful that the clouds rolled back, pouring daylight down into the square and revealing the dreadful vision that had triggered the schism on Divinus Prime.

Hesbon's tears ran freely as he forced himself to look directly at the Miracle. The clouds vanished, torn open by the prince's storm, and where they should have revealed the clear blue of a midday sky, Hesbon saw the world looking back at him. As on every other day since the civil war began, the sky was a mirror an exact likeness of the world below. Hesbon even fancied that he could see himself, hunkered down next to a tank, miles up in the sky.

"For the Emperor!" cried Hesbon, his voice hoarse with emotion.

The prince was not finished. As daylight flooded the scene, it revealed another strange sight: a group of militiamen, floating up from a ruined temple on the far side of the square, kicking and writhing as their weapons clattered onto the flagstones below.

The prince raised his free hand into the whirlwind and a shaft of holy light engulfed him. The sapphire in his chestplate blazed, throwing a dazzling blue nimbus around his open hand. Then he clenched his fist and hurled the ball of light into the sky. It shot like a thunderbolt towards the mirror city over head and, as it flew, it dragged the floating men with it, propelling them higher.

As they soared higher, their mirror twins rushed down to meet them. The two sets of men passed through each other before simultaneously slamming to the ground.

They hit with such force that Hesbon could not help but wrench. He was standing just twenty feet from where the men exploded across the flagstones.


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter Ten

Librarium Sagrestia, Arx Angelicum, Baal.

Confessor Zin entered the Ostensorio with the swagger of a triumphant king. He was flanked by a column of priests and subordinates, all wearing white led on their faces and cradling a dazzling collection of holy relics. The priests in the front lines waved glinting censers, shrouding those behind in scented fumes, and by the time Zin emerged there was so much smoke he seemed to be levitating up from the underworld. He was carried on an enormous sedan chair that was gilded and polished to such a sheen it blazed, flashing in the light of the myriad candles lining the procession. Above his head teetered a dazzling panoply of banners and standards, all portraying the same angelic, sword-wilding figure. Some of the priests struggled beneath the weight of naked flagellates mounted on long, wooden stakes, their emaciated limbs nailed to the coarse bark, decorating the white faces of those below with bright, blooming flowers of blood. As they bled, the flagellates rang bells and clanged cymbals, creating a dreadful clattering din.

Gathered ahead of this gaudy procession, in the centre of the devastated hall, was a far more sombre group. Mephiston was waiting patiently before the brass monstrance, as cool and as inert as the shattered busts beneath his feet. He looked Immaculate, his intricately wrought battleplate polished to a dull sheen and his hands resting on the hilt of Vitarus, whose blade was dark and indolent, sensing no chance of bloodshed. Mephiston was flanked on one side by his right hand woman, the proud Lady Mariah, and on the other side by the eager-looking Lexicanium Antros. Behind the three Librarians were two squads of Blood Angels – battle-brothers of the fourth company, assembled in perfect, motionless formation behind Captain Vatrenus. Behind the Tactical Marines there was a Techmarine, his armour so laden with augmetics and the arcane machinery of the Adeptus Mechanicus that he looked like a mechanised beetle, looming in the shadows. His helmet was almost entirely obscured by measuring instruments and the rest of his armour was cluttered with massive servo-claws and drill bits as thick as a mortal man's wrist. Finally, there was a Sanguinary Priest armed with an ornate chainsword and the sinister looking medical instruments that marked him out as the keeper of his Chapter's gene-seed.

All of the Space Marines were dressed for war, wearing full battleplate and cradling a fearsome array of weaponry. There was also a mortal in their number: Prester Kohath, whose emaciated, unconscious body was fastened to the rim of the Carpus Monstrance by thick, metal chains. He was naked and his body had been painted with a complex network of runes and symbols. Several bundles of cabling trailed from his skull, disappearing into the bowl of the monstrance.

As Confessor Zin made his brash, ostentatious approach, Antros could not help but notice the irony of the scene. For all Zin's finery and pomp, he failed to match the silent authority of the Chief Librarian. Mephiston's power bled out of him, reaching into the souls of even the most rabid supplicants, so that even as they chanted their catechisms they where straining to see the face of the giant waiting to greet them.

The parade came to a halt near the monstrance and Zin's servants carried his sedan chair across the rubble, scattering strips of scented parchment across the stones as they went. They helped Zin from his seat and the corpulent priest knelt, attempting to genuflect before the Chief Librarian. He struggled, gasping, as his paunched robbed him of breath, until his servants rushed to assist him. Then he rose, his face paint glistening with sweat, he smiled with forced geniality.

"Chief Librarian," he said, "to meet you in the flesh is more than I ever dreamed possible. Your name had become a beacon of hope throughout the entire Cronian Sector and you can scarcely grasp how great an honour you do me by granting this audience. I would never -"

There was a clattering sound, somewhere in the darkness, as a rock dropped to the floor.

Zin faltered and stared into the shadows.

"You have nothing to fear, priest," said Lady Mariah, distaste dripping from her gentle features. She raised her sword slightly and the shadows withdrew, revealing the towering sentries arranged around the walls of the Ostensorio – Librarians, watching the ruins in a silent vigil, the psychic hoods of their battleplate shimmering in readiness.

Mariah lowered her sword, allowing the shadows to return.

Zin attempted another forced smile, but he was clearly terrified.

Silence filled the chamber, broken only by the crackling of flames from overhead. The vast hall was lit by metal braziers, all of them borne on anti-grav platforms designed to resemble zodiacal beasts. Bronze dragons and copper snakes circled above the Space Marines, throwing animated shadows across Mephiston's motionless face, giving the illusion that he was howling or snarling.

"My lords and lady," said Zin after a few minutes, looking from one Space Marine to another. "Librarians of the Librarium. Have you read the missives we sent? Have you grasped the crucial role you are to play in the Wars of Sanctitude? All our observances have shown that only the Chief Librarian of the bloodied host can be our guide, that only you can lead us to our lost brother, Arch-Cardinal Dravus, so that my brethren and I will be able to lift the terrible malediction that has befallen our most sacred world. Your face has haunted the dreams and waking dreams of every priest who has set foot on Divinus Prime. You are the Astra Angelus that was foretold in the book of subjection. My Lord, I have not slept nor eaten for days, so great is my excitement at the thought of meeting you."

Mariah raised an eyebrow at the words 'nor eaten' but remained silent.

Mephiston nodded at the grand procession arrayed behind Zin. "In honour of the old accords between this Chapter and the Ecclesiarches, you may accompany us, but your brethren will not be required."

Zin looked horrified. "Accompany?" He was about to protest when he caught the warning in Mariah's eyes.

He nodded meekly and allowed his entourage to be escorted from the hall. There were so many of them that it took nearly ten minutes for them to shuffle out, moving with far less theatricality than when they arrived. Nobody spoke as this exodus took place, but Zin mouthed a few prayers as he found himself quite alone with the Blood Angels. Mephiston nodded and Antros stepped forward. He sensed Mariah glaring at him and took a deep breath, determined to perform his role well, whatever doubts he might have about the future he unrolled the scroll prepared for him by Scholiast Ghor and began to read from the handwritten document, his amplified voice booming through his helmet. "Lord Mephiston, Chief Librarian of the Bloodied host, Consul Aetheric to Commander Dante, Interlocutor of the sacred lineaments, Warden of the Accurst, Master of the Quorum Empyrric, Keeper of the Fifteenth Basilica and Harbinger Vindicta, who is beloved of the God-Emperor and who regards every one with fathomless insight, has made it known to all that, from this moment on, in all matters pursuant to the following interdict..."

As Antros' words rang out through the shadows, Confessor Zin frowned, straining to catch every clause and sub-clause of the long, labyrinthine edict. Several times he shook his head, bewildered by the language, and held up a hand for a pause, but Antros simply continued with increasingly more strident language, until he reached the end of the document and held it out towards the priest. As he presented it a pair of cherubs fluttered down from the broken vaults. Their faces were hidden behind expressionless, ivory masks and they both wore glittering golden haloes. They took the vellum, intoned on unintelligible oaths and gave it to Zin.

Lady Mariah nodded to Antros and they both turned to face the monstrance, Mariah raising her sword and placing the tip on the lip of the urn-like relic and Antros raising his staff and resting the metal head on the lip of the urn-like relic. They began to walk in a slow circle, whispering what seemed to be a random assortment of vowel sounds.

Zin gasped, making the sign of the aquila.

At a curt nod from Captain Vatrenus, one of the Tactical Marines broke ranks and gripped Zin by the arm, hauling him up the cracked marble steps of the dais. The Blood Angel said nothing as he deposited him at the edge of the platform, not far from the huge chalice, and turned to look back at the scene unfolding before them. Zin tried to move back down the steps, but the Battle-brother's grip was unyielding.

Pale fire coursed along the Librarians' sword and staff, igniting the rim of the monstrance and causing the filigreed metal to flicker and glow. They continued circling and, the tips of the sword and staff dragged along the rim. They created a haunting, metallic drone that grew louder with every step they took. The battle-brothers of the Fourth Company fanned out around the edge of the dais and, to Zin's obvious dismay, they readied their weapons.

The droning sound became so loud that Zin clamped his hands over his ears, yelling unheard complaints as the vibrations shook his portly body.

"I am the steel in the blade," said Mephiston. He spoke gently, but his voice rumbled through the chamber with seismic force, cracking some of the broken masonry.

Mephiston raised Vitarus and, as he did so, needles of red fire sliced from the darkness. Several of the Librarians dotted around the edges of the great hall had raised their staffs and were now linked to the Chief Librarian by strands of lambent power. The lines of psychic energy emanating from their staffs were magnified by Vitarus and united into a single column of fire, which Mephiston directed at the prone form of Prester Kohath. The blast slammed into the man and his flesh lit up as though covered in thousands of embers. He remained slumped and oblivious, showing no sign of pain, or even the ritual he was powering.

Zin howled in panic now but his words were lost in the din.

"I am the blood in the heart," said Mephiston. Again, his soft tones rocked the chamber.

Lines of fire laced out of the shadows, revealing more Librarians.

Mephiston channelled this new influx of power into Prester Kohath and the unconscious priest burned so brightly that Zin had to shield his eyes.

"I am the heart of the flame," said Mephiston. He held his hand aloft and, as more Librarians joined their force to his, the Chief Librarian's palm began to burn with psychic flame. Crimson runes ignited in the centre of his hand, shimmering like newly forged metal. The chamber shook with even more force as a column of blood tore from Prester Kohath's chest and slammed into the blazing runes on Mephiston's hand.

"I am the blood of Sanguininus," said Mephiston, and the Ostensorio vanished.


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter Eleven

Divinus Prime.

An animal howled in pain. The sound was tormented and strange, as though heard through water. For a few second, Lexicanium Antros thought it might just be in his head. Then he noticed that his suit was droning statics at him, describing the status of his vital functions and the integrity of his armour, as though he had survived some kind of crash. The suit spoke of environmental conditions and a life sustaining atmosphere, and he realised that Mephiston's blood rite had been a success – he was on the world that Zin had lost. He was on Divinus Prime. He opened his eyes but saw only blinding whiteness. His eyes were adjusting quickly to the glare but he could see nothing clearly. He thought he could make out a forest spread out around him, but there was something oddly regimented about the rows of soaring pale trunks. There was another tormented howl, louder and more agonised than the first. Antros tried to move and managed to wrench an arm free with a crunch of breaking stone. He blinked several times, dimming his visor further and slowly revealing a dizzying sight – he was hundreds of feet up in the air, embedded in one of the structures he had mistaken for trees. As his vision continued to improve, he saw that they were man made: sky-scraping, bone white columns that were strikingly beautiful – pale, twisted spires, intricately woven from millions of spars and arches, giving each one the delicate, honeycomb appearance of a needle-shaped seedpod, it was only as he looked at the tower he was perched on that he realised the incredible truth: this forest of white towers, tumbling towards the horizon in every direction, was made entirely of bones. The planet was an ossuary, built on a scale that left him dazed. How many millions of bones must have been use to create this endless vista? He looked at the bones that surrounded him and saw how oddly liquefied they looked – every femur and rib slumped and merged with the bones below, sagging and looping like folds of lace. He tapped the bone beneath his hand, a contorted skull, and it crumbled at his touch. The bones had been petrified. They had been here so long they had been transformed into crumbling stone sculptures.

Countless thousands of bodies were stacked beneath him in this single, huge column. He saw the skeletons of humans and other creatures he did not recognise, in such incredible numbers that they had become a kind of morbid, abstract art – a gleaming exposition of death, baking slowly under a heavy, somnolent sun.

As Antros grew accustomed to the disorientating angle, he realised why he had mistaken the fossil sculptures for trees. As well as a central trunk, hundreds of bodies wide and thousands deep, there were countless 'branches' jutting out over a flat sun-baked scrubland that stretched out below him. The scale of the construction was staggering.

"I am the blood of Sanguinius," said a quiet voice.

Reality blurred, as though shaken in a tumbler of water.

The bone tower vanished and Antros was back in the Ostensorio again. The Librarians around the edge of the hall were lit up by their blazing staffs. He could see their souls, hunched over them in the form of spectral angels, wings spread and eyes burning with empyrric fire.

Antros was about to cry out to them, to explain what had happened to Mandacus, but before he could talk the Ostensorio was gone.

He found himself on a broad transitway – a road of chalky, white stone rippling with the heat of a late afternoon sun, blurring the horizon with heat haze.

He was once more surrounded by the bone trees, but now he was looking up at them from ground level. The size of the warped his perspective as he craned his neck to see their pinnacles. They seemed to bend, leaning over him like tired old men stooping to examine the ground.

As Antros studied them, he noticed something that troubled him. For as long as he could remember, he had heard the galaxy whispering to him, filling his mind with half-heard prayers and visions. The elders of his tribe had feared his second sight and, had his life taken a different turn, he would have been executed as a warlock or sequestered onto one of Terra's mysterious black ships for a fate unknown. As a successful Blood Angels aspirant, however, he had found his way into Lady Mariah's care and began his slow, still incomplete task of harnessing his mind. But now the voices had been silenced. The idea pained him, as if he had just lost a part of his body.

"The Dolorous Towers," whispered somebody.

Antros thought that perhaps his powers had returned, then he looked down and saw that he was no longer alone. Kneeling beside him, his white face paint streaked with tears, was Confessor Zin. It was he who had given a name to these soaring ossuaries and he kept repeating the words, rocking with his hands clasped together in prayer. He was quite oblivious to anything else.

Standing a few feet away was Mariah, her head bowed and thrown into shadow. She was tracing runes into the dust with her force sword and talking to herself in hushed, urgent tones.

Further down the road was Mephiston. He was crouched in the shadows, his hand pressed onto the ground, embers drifting up from between his fingers. He stood, wiped some blood from his palm and strode off away from them down the road, hair trailing behind him like a vivid, white pennant. Captain Vatrenus and his two squads of Tactical Marines marched behind him, scanning the road side as they went, peering at Divinus Prime through the sights of their bolters. Squad Seriphus took one side of the road and Squad Hestias the other. In their crimson armour the looked like blood, pouring towards the horizon. Antros noticed there was no sign of Battle Brother Mandacus, and a few others had vanished too. Clearly not everyone had survived the journey. Two squads had set out, along with three Librarians, Captain Vatrenus and an Apothecary, but now Sergeant Hestias was only accompanied by two of his men and Sergeant Seriphus only lead three. That left twelve Blood Angels in total. Enough to face anything the planet could throw at them, decided Antros.

"Lexicanium" said a voice from behind him and he turned to face Zin.

The group approached the sinuous, ornately worked fossils that used to house the abbey's towering doors. To Antros it felt as though they were walking through the jaws of a skeletal behemoth, its vast ivory mouth opening onto the darkness within. A terrible stink drifted through the portal – the harsh, acid tang of burned hair and meat.

As the Librarians strode forwards, they raised their force swords, igniting them with a thought and splashing crimson light across the building within.

It was a charnel house. The light of their swords painted everything a nightmarish hue but, even in broad light of day, the abbey would have made a brutal sight. The source of the smell was revealed. The square was heaped with blackened, charred corpses. Antros was so disgusted by the sight that it took him a few moments to notice what was so peculiar about the scene.

"Nothing else is burned," he said as they picked their way through the remains.

"Throne," muttered Zin, looking around at the porticoes and balustrades that surrounded them. "How can that be?" The fire that had consumed the bodies had left no mark on any of the buildings. The gleaming skulls and ribcages that made up the walls and pillars were completely untouched by fire.

"Warpfire," replied Antros, sensing the hand of a powerful sorcerer.

Confessor Zin's face crumpled with fear as he saw the full extent of the massacre spread out before them. He recoiled, eyes straining in horror, clutching his medallion. "We must leave," he hissed. "Prester Brennus is right – there is nothing to be done here. We must go."

Only Zin spoke of it, but they all felt the presence he was referring to. The aether-light of the Librarians' swords had barely raked the steps of the first sacristy and the rest of the ruins were bathed in darkness, but the shadows were horribly animated. They all sensed they were not alone.

Captain Vatrenus ordered Squad Seriphus to spread out around the courtyard, scouring the butcher-slab streets for any sign of life.

"Report, Sergeant Hestias. What do you see."

"We entered through the postern gate," said Sergeant Hestias. "No sign of movement. We've reached the bell tower now, to the east of the basilica. Nothing but corpses."

Mephiston had reached the bottom steps of the sacristy, still flanked by Mariah. The sanguine light of their swords washed over the steps and lit up the entrance. The doors were intact but they had been flung open.

Standing at the threshold, draped in shadow, was a man.

"You're not looking hard enough," drawled Mariah.

"Shell we return?" Voxed Sergeant Seriphus.

"Hold your Position," replied Mephiston as he began climbing the steps towards the figure.

"Wait outside the gate," said Antros to his two wards and jogged across the square towards the sacristy.

"Who seeks enlightenment?" asked the figure at the top of the steps. The voice was friendly and full of warmth. The stranger walked into the light and Antros saw that he was massive, almost as bit as Mephiston, and wearing some kind of archaic, white power armour, edged with gold trim. Antros frowned as he studied the design – beautiful, baroque details that were not quite the same as the Blood Angels wargear, but still oddly familiar. It reminded his of the knights shows in the Librarium's oldest friezes. The regal-looking warrior seemed to have stepped out of prehistory. There was a helmet at his belt, topped with a black, transverse crest and his heraldry was a version of the Adeptus Ministorum symbol – a capital I emblazoned with a spiked halo and a skull. In the centre of his cuirass was an enormous sapphire that gleamed with inner light. He wore a gilded bolt pistol at his belt and had an exotic-looking sword in his hand – a falchion of some kind, its curved blade engraved with and intricate pattern of whorls and loops. All of this finery only served as a frame for the warrior's beaming, jovial face. He had ruddy, tanned skin and black, perfectly straight hair that reached down to his waist, making him almost the reverse of the pale, white haired Mephiston.

"I am Pieter Zorambus," he said, smiling broadly. "And I bless you all for seeking guidance in such dark times. May I ask your names?"

He held out a hand to Mephiston in greeting, seeming genuinely delighted.

Mephiston studied the ebullient warrior in silence and a tense hush fell over the courtyard.

Zorambus continued smiling, but began to look a little strained as the seconds rolled on.

Mephiston looked past him, into the shadowy interior of the sacristy. The he did a strange thing: he stumbled slightly, as though unsteady on his feet. He looked towards Mariah and she saw that his eyes had filled with blood, just like they had in the Carceri Arcanum, but this time the red orbs were bleeding light, as though there were fire inside the Chief Librarian's skull.

Mariah was about to speak when Mephiston turned back to face Zorambus and raised his gun.

Zorambus' smile changed to one of cheerful disbelief and he raised his hands in a placatory gesture.

Then his head jolted back, hit by a single shot from Mephiston's plasma pistol.


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter Twelve

Tarn Abbey, Divinus Prime.

The sound of Mephiston's shot echoed around the city and Pieter Zorambus toppled backwards towards the doorway of the sacristy, arms flailing as the force of the headshot lifted his feet from the ground. Rather than collapsing, however, he remained suspended in mid-air, juddering like an oversized marionette. It was as though someone had paused a playback on a pict unit, looping the moment of his death. Antros had reached the other librarians by now and saw what happened next with disturbing clarity. Zorambus shook with increasing violence until his outline began to shimmer and he started to vanish from view.

"My lord," said Antros, but before he could say more, Zorambus' violent fit ceased and the Blood Angels were left facing two Unbegotten Princes instead of one. They both smiled.

"I understand your concern," said the two identical pieters. Neither of them showed any sign of a head wound and both held up their hands in the same placating gesture. "But I believe we are trying to achieve the same goal. If we could exchange words rather than gunfire I could explain how we could work -"

Captain Vatrenus muttered an oath and unloaded several bolter rounds into the two warriors, sending them staggering backwards. Again rather than falling they shook violently for a few seconds and then duplicated.

"we are all children of the God-Emperor," said four Pieters, wearing matching smiles. "And we all desire to see his treasures unearthed. Whatever differences you imagine we might have, they can so easily be-"

There was a roar of bolter fire as the battle-brothers of Squad Seriphus unleashed a barrage of shells.

"Wait!" cried Antros, but his voice was drowned out by the gunfire and, when the smoke cleared, they were facing dozens of Unbegotten Princes, all shaking their heads with identical expressions of disappointment as they raised their falchions and pistols and strode down the steps.

Ceramite clashed against ceramite as the white-armoured knights met the crimson ranks of the Tactical Marines.

"To me!" growled Captain Vatrenus over the vox, summoning the rest of his men to the square.

The Space Marines formed a wall of armour in front of Mephiston and the other Librarians, fighting with brutal efficiency. But for every warrior that fell, two more appeared. They were gradually filling the courtyard with ranks of identical, white-armoured knights whose smiles had been replaced with determined scowls as they forced the Blood Angels back across the mound of corpses. Antros sought Mephiston out in the melee. Mephiston powered up the steps, flinging the white knights aside with ease. When he reached the doors of the sacristy, he turned to face the battle below and raised Vitarus over his head. The swords blade vanished, replaced by a column of vermillion fire.

Antros gasped in shock as heat pulsed through his gauntlet, causing him to drop his bolt pistol. He saw that all the other Blood Angels had been stricken in the same way, forced to defend themselves with their swords and combat knives as the enemy piled into them.

Mephiston sliced his flaming sword through the air and the knights nearest to him lit up like beacons, their white battleplate spilling red light as they toppled back down the steps. When they crashed to the flagstones, they writhed and howled, adding torrents of hissing blood to the shimmering lights. The heat coming from them was so intense that the air around them rippled as they died and their armour buckled, as though crushed in a vacuum.

"Hollow Fire!" roared Lady Mariah, who was on the far side of the crowd.

Mariah had not directed her words to Antros, but he immediately understood the reference. His training might not be complete but he had studied every word of The Glutted Scythe – Mephiston's treatise on lethal invocations. The tome was forbidden to less experienced scholars such as Antros, but he had acquired a copy many years ago. The Exhortation of Hollow Fire sprang to his lips almost unbidden, begging to be spoken out loud, but he suppressed the urge. He felt the invocation blazing through the thoughts of Mariah, Mephiston and Rhacelus and his hunger to join them was almost overwhelming, but he had never attempted such a thing before. To feel such potent sorcery, so close by, and not be able to taste its power was a torment.

The white-armoured knights howled in triumph as they saw the Tactical Marines drop their guns; then their howls took on a different tone as red fire rippled through their bodies. Mariah and Rhacelus had raised their force swords in mimicry of Mephiston's pose, weaving dazzling strands of light and sending a rippling wave of death through the enemy ranks.

The Veteran Librarians worked as one to create a fierce corona of light. The heat was so intense Antros could feel it despite the environmental controls of his power armour. All around him, knights were toppling and crumpling in the inferno, their faces melting as they tried to rip off their larva-like helms. Embers whirled through the air, billowing like clouds of fireflies, but all Antros could think of was the splendour of the sorcery. It felt like a beautiful ocean, begging him to dive in and sample the fury of its tides. Just as he felt he could resist no longer, Antros heard Confessor Zin calling his name.

He turned from the temptation and looked back towards the gates. All he saw were ranks of the white knights, either blossoming into flames or still firing their bolters into the squads of Tactical Marines.

He wrenched himself away from the draw of the invocation and barged through the crowds of burning warriors. Some of the knights lashed out at him as he passed, roaring in pain and fury as they sliced their falchions towards his face, but they were half-dead and he smashed them aside with ease, using his staff as a club.

He reached the monastery gates and left the crush behind, staggering into the open space. With a flood of relief, her saw Zin helping Prester Brennus across the chalky road.

He slowed his pace, removed his helmet and drew a breath to call them back. It was only then that he saw a man striding towards them. It was Pieter Zorambus, or at least one Pieter Zorambus. This particular Unbegotten Prince was badly wounded – one of his legs had been warped out of all recognition by the heat. But his broad grin gleamed in the moonlight as he raised his sword and moved in on his slow-moving prey.

There was no way Antros could reach the priests before Zorambus got to them. The Exhortation of Hollow Fire was still echoing through his thought and the archaic language rumbled up through his throat, dark and violent, refusing to be suppressed any longer. Feelings of hatred and blood lust enveloped him, and as his staff erupted into crimson flames the world was engulfed by a red haze.

Several feet away, at the edge of the road, Pieter Zorambus staggered to a halt as the flames shrouded his body.

Brennus and Zin cried out in alarm, noticing Zorambus for the first time as he lurched towards them wreathed in fire. The flames were not enough to stop him as he reached Zin, Zorambus hacked down at him.

Zin's portly frame clearly belied his strength. He managed to dodge the warrior's blow and then barrelled into him, head down. The warrior's crippled leg collapsed beneath him and he toppled backwards onto the road.

Pieter Zorambus was howling as the fire poured from his eyes and mouth, but his flesh was unmarred and he was able to stand, draw back his sword and prepare to strike again.

Rage exploded in Antros' mind and he intoned the curse again, roaring it this time. The night turned white and he staggered under the violence of the magic. Divinus Prime faded from view, replaced by a liquid vortex of shapes and colours. Power tore through the fibres of his flesh, swelling and multiplying until he felt got like and ephemeral – a spirit of raw energy. Amorphous shapes formed from the aether and swam towards him – undulating bundles of limbs, like anemones rippling across the seabed. They rushed through the whirling colours, their grasping, nebulous limbs straining towards him as they formed and reformed. The sinewy flesh boiled and inverted, spawning hideous faces. Leering, hysterical grins popped into existence, crammed with rows of needle-teeth and surrounded by lidless, misshapen eyes.

Antros looked for a way back to Divinus Prime but all he could see was a tide of daemons. He scoured his memory, visualising his copy of The Glutted Scythe, recalling the Exhortation of Hollow Fire and wondering what he had forgotten. Why had he been cut loose? He had untethered himself from the materium. He felt himself fading into the maelstrom of power, losing his sense of self and form. He visualised his armoured body, picturing the details with all the clarity he could muster and, to his relief, he saw his physical shape reappear beneath him – his blue battleplate reflecting the lunatic whirlpool of colours that surrounded him. He summoned his staff back into being just before the first of the daemons reached him and he smashed it in to the creature's grotesque face. The daemon somersaulted away into the tumult, laughing all the harder, but dozens more were almost on him – a tsunami of rippling limbs and tentacles, like one great mass of daemon flesh.

Antros scoured the pages of his imaginary copy of The Glutted Scythe, attempting to find an invocation that could save him from this avalanche of horrors. To his frustration the words of the book smeared and ran, as though washed away by chemical rain, leaving colourful streaks where there should have been a facsimile of Mephiston's precise script.

More of the daemons reached him and Antros could do nothing but use his staff as a club, smashing the bubbling mass of limbs away with furious blows, as despair threatened to overcome him.

To his surprise, his blows seemed to have a powerful effect oh his attackers – they screamed in frustration as blue fire engulfed them, just like it had swallowed the white knights in the abbey. Antros fought harder, but then he noticed that even the daemons that were nowhere near his blows were exploding into balls of blue light. The light grew brighter until he struggled to see what was happening. Suddenly he was falling, as though gravity had noticed his escape and called him to account. As he fell, Antros saw the true cause of the fire: Mephiston. The Chief Librarian had entered his mind and was carving a path through the horrors, hacking and slashing with his flame-bright sword and spreading a great elliptical wall of blue flame through the scrabbling, gibbering daemons.

Antros continued fall and a funnel of blue fire formed around him. Then he hit the ground with a painful crunch.

The flames and colours were gone and Antros found himself back on the bone-white road.

Zin and Brennus were standing a few feet away, staring at him in horror. There was a small fire smouldering next to them – the warped, scorched remains of Zorambus.

Antros sat up and felt something brittle tumble over his face. He reached up and caught the stinking, ash-like remnants of his own hair. He looked at his armour and saw that it was scorched and blackened. Trails of smoke drifted up from his gauntlets as though he had been gripping hot coals.

He looked around for Mephiston, but saw no sign of him. The battle was still raging in the abbey and the ruins were bathed in mystical light, giving the petrified bones a silvery, lunar quality.

"Are you hurt?" asked Zin, summoning up the courage to approach him.

Antros climbed to his feet and dusted the ash from his armour. He ran his hand over his head, feeling nothing but stubble where there had previously been thick locks of hair.

He shook his head and examined his face for injuries, finding nothing. "I am unharmed," he said. Looking at the charred remains of Pieter Zorambus.

"You became holy fire," breathed Confessor Zin, hurrying forwards, his bulbous features quivering with excitement. "The light of the God-Emperor shone through you and struck down that..." he sneered at the burned remains, "that filthy heretic."

"The flames were consuming you," whispered Prester Brennus, his voice trembling.

Antros shook his head again, his thoughts still clouded with images of daemons. "I had no choice," he said looking out into the moonlight, half expecting to see more of the unformed things bubbling from the shadows.


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter Thirteen

Mormotha, Divinus Prime.

They thundered across the plains, trailing a great mountain of dust as they screamed between the penitent trees. The priests of Tarn Abbey had left a surprisingly powerful array of vehicles behind and, as dawn turned the bleached landscape in to a kaleidoscope of reds and golds, Antros saw their destination rushing towards them out of the heat haze. He was hunched in one of the eagle-prowed skiffs they had discovered in the abbey. They were antiques, elaborate constructions of iron and brass that no one had expected to work, but the priests had obviously treated them as holy relics. Their engines had a deep, powerful growl that filled the morning with noise and fumes as they hurled the Blood Angels along, gliding just a few feet above the ground.

Rhacelus was next to him, staring into the dust storm trailing from Mephiston and Mariah's craft. Behind them, the two priests, Zin and Brennus, were laying on the floor clutching onto the spars that lined the hull. Captain Vatrenus and some of his Tactical Marines were standing, legs wide as they braced against the lurching motion of the vehicle, their bolters raised and trained on the shapes blurring past.

Mormotha was constructed in the same ossuary fashion as the abbey, but as the rising sun painted it in warm, golden hues, Antros saw that Divinus Prime's capital was built on a much grander scale. The entire city was contained within a circular wall, hundreds of feet tall and punctuated with gun emplacements and missile batteries. Antros could see the silhouettes of soldiers on the walls carrying banners emblazoned with the sigil of Divinus Prime, a winged sword hilt, and others bearing the symbol of the Adeptus Ministorum.

Unlike Tarn Abbey, Mormotha was perfectly intact. The bleached walls matched the macabre beauty of the penitent trees, the curved, bone constructed crenellations reaching up, talon-like, into the clouds.

Broad, paved roads approached the city from several directions and they were all crowded with refugees and weary looking soldiers. Barley a soul looked up as the skiffs hurtled past them, whipping up clouds of chalk dust. The columns of survivors just trudged on into the morning sun, heads down, carrying a pitiful collection of personal belongings and hauling their wounded on makeshift litters. An army of rickety servitors trundled and lurched through the refugees, carrying broken equipment and the corpses of those who had not survived the journey. It was a miserable scene and Antros started to understand the scale of what had befallen Divinus prime.

He could see thousands of dispossessed souls stumbling through the barren scrubland, their lines disappearing into the distance. It was one thing to hear the Quorum Empyrric discuss these wars in derisive tones, but quite another to see the consequences. There were families mixed in with priests – normal citizens of the imperium, just trying to stay alive, hollow cheeked elders hobbling on bandaged feet, and mothers cradling their febrile infants, all staring at the walls up ahead with the vacant expression of people who could remember nothing but the need to keep walking. Many would never reach their goal – the roads were lined with the corpses of refugees who had died within sight of the capital.

The gates to the city stood open and there were crowds of hooded, white robed priests waiting to welcome those who staggered inside, offering cups of water and hunks of bread as they helped them into the shade. The air was full of noise and movement as mechanised hymnals fluttered overhead – leather bound tomes borne through the air on broad, dove white wings. As they flew they broadcasted the ghostly recordings of long dead Terran choirs. Singing along tunelessly with hymnals were the relic sellers who haunted all shrine worlds. Antros saw plump, lavishly dressed frauds with rubicund faces, cheerfully peddling holy tracts and crudely made reliquaries to wretches who could not afford to feed themselves.

The Blood Angels landed their skiffs outside the gates and stormed through the noisy throng, drawing surprised glances as people saw the towering figures of Mephiston, Mariah and the other Blood Angels. Mephiston and Mariah paused as they walked into the centre of a large crossroads. The four roads that met just inside the gates were broad enough to support a whole phalanx of tanks, but they still seemed narrow because of the soaring town houses and temples that surrounded them. The buildings were constructed in the same funerary style as the penitent trees outside: sturdy, fluted columns supporting domed turrets and grand pediments, all intricately wrought from millions of warped, fossilised bones. The city would have looked like a mausoleum if it wasn't overrun with thousands of distraught refugees, all talking and yelling at once. The steps of chapels and basilicas swarmed with crowds of bellowing, sunburned survivors, all venting their pent up grief and anger on the officials who were trying to aid them.

As they passed through the mob, Antros heard the same story repeated over and over: cities and towns that had become slaughter houses, bloodbath battles as the secessionists known as the Enlightened turned on their brothers, killing those who would not embrace their new doctrine. It sounded to Antros as though many had embraced the new cult. He heard refugees mutter of family members and friends who had converted to the new faith. They spoke of them in shocked, desperate tones, calling them apostates.

Antros and the others gathered around Mephiston and Mariah at the centre of the crossroads, drawing more surprised glances. The Blood Angels looked like an impregnable bastion as crowds of mortals backed away from them, crying out in alarm and calling for guards.

+Even those that know its name will not speak openly of the Blade Petrific,+ said Mephiston inside Mariah's head. She looked at him and then realised that Antros nodded in response.

+It is an article of their faith, discussed only in their most sacred rites.+

Mephiston gave Mariah a meaningful look and he realised that Antros had seen her thoughts again. Antros looked at the crowds wondering if he could delve into the mind of a local and find a memory that could lead them to their prize. It was no use. No one had any memory of the Blade Petrific.

He was about to ask Rhacelus if he was still blind but the commotion caused by their arrival had drawn the attention of one of the beleaguered officials.

"Hello?" called the man, barging through a scrum of arguing merchants and reaching Mephiston.

He was full of bluster, and seemed about to demand something of them, but the colour drained from his face and he stumbled to a halt. He looked from Mephiston's corpse like features to Mariah's inhuman beauty, to Rhacelus' imperious glare and then Antros' inhuman beauty, and shook head, opening and closing his mouth a few times, forgetting whatever he had been intending to say.

Prester Brennus stepped from behind the Blood Angels and the man visibly relaxed as he saw someone of more normal proportions.

"Brothers," he said, as Confessor Zin also stepped out of the crowd.

"Welcome to Mormotha. I'm Prester Cyriak. Where have you travelled from?" He glanced nervously at the Blood Angels, noticing Captain Vatrenus and his men striding through the crowds to join them. "And who are your companions?"

Prester Brennus stumbled forwards and grabbed his hands. "Tarn Abbey is gone!" he cried. "The Enlightened crucified anyone who would not join them! There coming here next! The apostates will tear down these walls and butcher-"

"Calm yourself brother," replied Prester Cyriak. He embraced Brennus. "Word has reached us of the murders at Tarn Abbey, but you need fear no more." He waved at the crowds. "Arch-Cardinal Dravus has summoned everyone still following the true imperial creed. Three are whole regiments of Volscan Dragoons have turned their back on the apostasy of their brothers and travelled here to fight for the Arch-Cardinal. And more loyal soldiers are arriving every day." His eyes flashed with pride. "There are thousands of militiamen here too. Zorambus is coming to meet his doom, brother. These atrocities will soon be over and once the Arch-Cardinal has dealt with that wretched fraud, he intends to perform an even greater miracle. He means to return us to the arms of the Emperor."

"What do you mean, brother?" asked Confessor Zin.

Prester Cyriak was struggling to contain his excitement, but he managed to keep his voice low. "The Arch-Cardinal has spent many days praying in the wilderness after the Emperor blessed him with a vision. Dravus is seeking a way to break this unholy silence that has enveloped us. He seeks a way to return us to the light of the imperium."

Zin glanced triumphantly at Mephiston. "Do you see? Do you see what you have done, my lord? Your mere presence on this world has broken the curse. This can be no coincidence. It is as it was prophesised!"

Prester Brennus slumped in Cyriak's arms, overcome with exhaustion and emotion. "Forgive me, brother," said Cyriak, looking pained at the man's suffering. "I must get you to the infirmary."

He summoned some of his fellow priests over and ordered them to find treatment for the man. Confessor Zin muttered a quick prayer over the barley conscious Brennus and promised to visit him as soon as he was able.

"Take us to the Arch-Cardinal," said Mariah and Rhacelus, once Brennus was gone. Cyriak grimaced and looked to Zin for support. "Brother, as you can imagine, even if it were within my power, I could not simply admit strangers to the Arch-Cardinal's presence. I'm sure your companions pose no danger but I would need some kind of-"

Rhacelus and Mariah stepped Forwards, their master-crafted armour glinting in the sunlight, their hulking frames threw Cyriak into shadow and the man looked up in terror. "We are the sons and daughter of Sanguinius," they said clearly nauseated at having to address so lowly a specimen. "And we can assure you that we do pose a threat." They flicked back their cloaks and rested their hands on the pommel of their swords. "Question the will of a Blood Angel again and you will meet the Emperor sooner than you expected."

Cyriak backed away with a horrified grimace, his hands raised protectively. He shook his head and was about to flee when Zin interceded.

"Prester Cyriak," said Zin, stepping between Rhacelus, Mariah and the priest.

"If you could inform the Arch-Cardinal that I am here, and that I am in the company of Lord Mephiston, Chief Librarian of the Blood Angels, he will be all too pleased to see us, I assure you."

"But he's not here!" said Cyriak. "He travelled alone to the Arazi Plains. As I said it has been prophesised that he will receive guidance from the God-Emperor."

Zin pressed Cyriak further. "Brother, where exactly in Arazi Plains? We must speak with him urgently. Lord Mephiston cannot be left waiting. You must send word to-"

"We will wait," said Mephiston, studying the crowds of refugees that were staring at them.

As Mariah looked at Mephiston she noticed that his left arm was shaking and the armour was hazed by a cloud of black sparks. Mephiston followed her gaze and gripped the vambrace. He muttered under his breath until the sparks were extinguished, but his arm continued to tremble.

+Are you ok Mephiston?+ Mariah asked him in his mind.

Mephiston nodded. "Take us to Father Orsuf."

Cyriak looked at Mephiston's arm, his eyes widening in fear, and he seemed unable to reply.

"Orsuf is alive?" asked Rhacelus, glancing at Mephiston.

"Do you know a Father Orsuf?" asked Zin, looking confused but trying to give Cyriak a reassuring smile. He nodded at the growing crowd that was forming around them. "It might be better if we were out of your way."

Cyriak nodded eagerly, clearly delighted by the prospect of making the Blood Angels someone else's responsibility. "Yes, of course. Of course. And I do know Father Orsuf. The old preacher. But he rarely receives guests. Is there anyone else? I'm sure someone..." His words trailed off as he flushed red.

"He will receive me," said Mephiston.

Cyriak nodded and started barging a path through the crowds waving for them to follow. "Please forgive me for..." He grimaced.

"No need to apologise, brother," said Zin, as he and the Blood Angels followed the awkward-looking priest off the main thoroughfare. He led them away from the gates and deeper into the city. Each street they entered was a little less crowded than the last and a little narrower. Antros quickly saw why Mormotha was know as the Labyrinth. Each concentric circle of the city was crowded with grand, ecclesiastical buildings: basilicas, mausoleums and tombs all striving to outdo the other's macabre beauty. Their porticoed facades flooded the avenues and fountains below with confusing pools of shadow.

As they neared the abbey, its tall, panelled doors swung open and a stern-faced preacher emerged to greet them. He limped out from beneath the abbey's arched porch and grimaced as he stepped into the light. He was thickset and burly but he moved with the studied slowness of the extremely old, leaning heavily on a staff. His spine was so twisted by battle-trauma that he had to tilt his head on one side to look up at the Blood Angels. His head was shaven and his face was covered in a network of old, silvery scars, surrounding a nose that had been broken so many times it looked like an S. He looked more like a crippled old street fighter than a priest and his ecclesiastical robes seemed oddly incongruous. Where his left eye should have been there was a large augmetic lens, fixed in a housing of battered iron. It turned slowly in its angry socket as he tried to focus it on Mephiston.

"By the Throne," he said, smiling. "Lord Mephiston."

Mephiston surprised Antros by speaking directly to the abbot, addressing him in respectful, almost warm tones. "Father Orsuf," he said. "I heard a malicious rumour that you had retired."

Orsuf scowled with embarrassment and tried to straighten his spine so he could offer Mephiston a salute. "My chainsword is still oiled and ready, Lord Mephiston, hanging on the wall of my study. It would be an honour to join you in battle once more. An honour! It has been too long since we fought together."

Mephiston gripped the man's shoulder. "I am joking, Adamis. You served the Emperor more fiercely than any preacher I ever saw. It can be no coincidence that you have been granted a few twilight years in which to reflect. You have earned a rest."

Orsuf shook his head furiously. "I have no use for rest, Lord Mephiston. Let me get my weapons."

He was about to limp away but Mephiston held him back.

"I need your mind, Adamis, not your weapons. I need to know more about your home. I have come here on an urgent mission but Divinus Prime is a mystery to me. I must learn the history of Mormotha and its construction. From what I have read you have become this city's lead scholar, and you were always a man of great insight."

The old preacher looked pleasantly Baffled by Mephiston's praise, but he smiled again. "It does my old bones good to see you." He shrugged. "And I am something of a historical relic, I suppose, so perhaps I can assist you." He waved at the building behind him. "The Tomb of the Eremite is one of the oldest structures in the city and our library contains some of the earliest records."

Mephiston's face remained as impassive as ever, but Mariah could sense his pleasure at the old man's reply.

Father Orsuf shrugged, laughing quietly to himself. "Strange days, strange days." He shuffled back up the steps towards the porch and waved for them to follow. "All are welcome at the Tomb of the Eremite."

He led them slowly through a series of candlelit chapels and into a large refectorium. The long, Spartan room was mostly empty, with just a few monks sat eating in silence from wooden bowls. Then he paused and looked at Mephiston, unsure what to do next.

Mephiston ordered Captain Vatrenus and his Tactical Marines to explore the city, acquaint themselves with its layout and report back in the morning. Then he turned to Epistolary Rhacelus. "Lexicanium Antros will be required to do more than observe in the days to come," he said. "We must accelerate his training."

Antros struggled not to grin but Rhacelus looked appalled by the idea. "My lord, is that wise?"

Antros could see the anger pouring out of him and it was not hard to guess the reason. Rhacelus had heard that Antros had been reading Mariah's mind trying to get information from her.

"Make him ready," said Mephiston. "He must master the rites listed in The Glutted Scythe before the return of the Arch-Cardinal. You saw how much use bolter fire was. It will fall to the four of us to rid these people of heresy."

Rhacelus glared at Antros but said no more.

Zin spoke up. "Forgive me, my lord, but I would like to see if I can find more news of the Arch-Cardinal. I am most keen to speak with him. Perhaps he is already on his way back to the city?" he said, looking at Cyriak.

Cyriak nodded. "It's possible. At the very least we could ask if he has been seen by any of the new arrivals." With that, Zin made the sign of the aquila to Mephiston and the two priests hurried away. Mephiston left the hall with Father Orsuf and Antros was left facing Epistolary Rhacelus and Mariah.

Rhacelus flared his nostrils with displeasure, as though considering a stain on his armour. Then he looked at the courtyard outside the refectorium. "Follow me, then," he said and they headed out into the morning sun.


	14. Chapter 14

Chapter fourteen.

Mormotha, Divinus Prime.

In the next three days, Antros lived through a dozen different lifetimes. Under the stern tutelage of Rhacelus, he memorised and recited each of the invocations recorded in The Glutted Scythe. They sat motionless in the courtyard, oblivious to the rising and falling of the sun, neither drinking nor eating as they worked slowly through the text. Priests would occasionally wander past them, paying tribute to the Tomb of Eremite or hurrying to prayers, but if they paused to look at the Librarians, all they saw were two colossal warriors hunched over a small book. The dangerous, warp-fuelled rites being enacted all took place behind the eyes of two Blood Angels. Rhacelus weaved entire warzones inside Antros' mind, plunging him into the endless battles he had fought during his centuries as a Blood Angel. At the crucial moment of each conflict he ordered Antros to join him in whichever evocation he had employed to defeat the enemy. Each time Antros faltered, Rhacelus firmly intoned the words again, leading the him through the rituals as enemies erupted into flames or collapsed, screaming, into fragments of dimensionless agony.

As he grappled with each of Mephiston's dark sacraments, Antros felt his grasp of the galaxy expanding and deepening, so that, by the time they were finally interrupted, he felt as thought he had been reborn. All the ambition and fervour that had brought him to this point seemed like a naive enthusiasm of a child; he was no less determined, but he now understood the hazardous journey he was beginning. Damnation and glory were a thought's-breadth away from each other. On the third morning of their time in the courtyard, Antros and Rhacelus were drawn from their visions by a harsh clanging of cymbals and tuneless bells.

Antros gradually focused on the scene, shaking his head free of a dozen realities as he rose to his feet, moving with the awkward hesitance of a somnambulist. He reached out to grasp a pillar as he tried to reacquaint his senses with the material world. After all he had seen done at Rhacelus' side, it seemed odd to recall that they had only just arrived at the abbey. The courtyard had been transformed during their absence. As his vision cleared, he saw that is was now crowded with a mixture of monks and heavily armoured militiamen and preachers – religious zealots, wearing straps of ammunition and psychotic stares. The air rang with impassioned prayers and catechisms as they crowded around the tomb at the centre of the courtyard.

As Antros stumbled out of the cloistered shadows, the preachers nearest to him faltered, staring in shock, but the flood of priests attempting to reach the tomb soon pushed them forwards. They had adorned the whole courtyard with scraps of parchment and there was a celebratory air to the gathering.

"What's happening?" demanded Antros, halting one of the militiamen.

Behind him Rhacelus had also risen from the stone pew and the militiaman looked up at them both wide-eyed, taking in their weapons and huge suits of power armour.

"Arch-Cardinal Dravus," he said. "We are giving thanks for his safe return." Despite his obvious fear of the Blood Angels, the priest stared at them ecstatically. "He survived his trials in the wilderness. He has returned to us with a message from the God-Emperor. He knows how we can end this war and reunite the Children of the Vow!"

Antros glanced at Rhacelus then looked at the priest again. "Where is he now? In the city?"

The crowd carried the man away from them, but he simply laughed. "Follow the procession!"

"We must find the Chief Librarian and Mariah," said Antros, turning back to Rhacelus.

"They will already know of this," replied Rhacelus. Warpfire was still sparking in his eyes, a remnant of their recent journeys. "Captain Vatrenus," he said, talking into his vox. "Where are you?"

There was a brief crackle of interference, then the Captain's strident voice broke through the white noise. "...minutes away from the amphitheatre. The Chief Librarian spoke to me an hour ago and ordered me to set watch over both of the entrances, but its hard to get near the place, never mind locate the gates. We have moved off the street. Need to let the crowed come past. Half the planet must be here. So many bloody refugees came through the gates yesterday. The idiots are crushing each other. The word it that Dravus has finally returned. they're all heading for the amphitheatre to hear him give some kind of sermon." There was a pause and when the captain spoke again, Antros could hear wariness in his voice. "Have you completed your studies? I checked on you yesterday morning. Tried talking to you. You wouldn't answer. Even when I spoke your names."

Rhacelus looked at Antros. His expression was an odd mixture of suspicion and pride. "We have finished our work."

"Is the Chief Librarian at the amphitheatre?" Rhacelus asked Captain Vatrenus over the vox.

"No. He is with you. Or, at least, he should be with you. He has not left the abbey since we arrived. He went into the library with that old preacher three days ago and never came out. I tried to vox him but had no luck. He contacted me this morning about the amphitheatre gates but he has been silent since then." He sounded irritated. "And he wants us to find an old sluice gate or some such thing, but I'm sure we could be more use with you."

Rhacelus nodded. "Find those gates, Captain Vatrenus. The Chief Librarian does not give orders on a whim. Use force if you need to. We will find Lord Mephiston and Lady Mariah and join you as soon as we can."

"Epistolary," said Vatrenus. "This Blade Mephiston seeks – is it here? Is it in Mormotha?" He sounded frustrated by his lack of clarity. "Could I be looking for it rather than hunting for gates and drains? The Chief Librarian never said where we would find the thing. Will this Arch-Cardinal Dravus have it?"

Rhacelus shook his head "I do not know, but Dravus is the most senior priest on Divinus Prime. He will know where their relics are stored. I presume the Chief Librarian and Lady Mariah will demand that Dravus hand the thing over or direct them to whatever reliquary houses it."

There was a silence across the vox-network and Antros could feel the captain's doubt. "Will he do that."

"Would you refuse the Chief Librarian and Lady Mariah?"

"No, Epistolary Rhacelus, I would not, but I do not have a planet's worth of faith-drunk zealots roaring my name."

"We will be with you soon, captain. Reach those gates," said Rhacelus, terminating the conversation.

Rhacelus frowned, considering the Captain's words. Then he led Antros through the courtyard and back into the refectorium. Several of the tables had been overturned and the dusty silence that had greeted the Blood Angels had vanished, replaced by a raucous, manic din. Rhacelus curled his lip in distaste at the priests and militiamen scrambling through the room, howling prayers. "Savages," he muttered. "And this is what we are sworn to protect."

Antros was about to defend the men when he noticed how deranged they looked. His words stalled in his mouth. The Space Marines marched easily against the flow of devotees and shoved open the double doors that the abbot had led Mephiston and Mariah through on the day of their arrival. They were met by a set of broad, sweeping steps and were about to ascend when Mephiston and Mariah emerged at the top followed by Father Orsuf. The abbot paused at the top of the steps and Mephiston placed a hand on the old preacher's shoulder in an uncharacteristic show of affection.

"To have accumulated so much knowledge in a single lifetime is a rare achievement, Father Orsuf," Mephiston said. "You are wise beyond your years."

The abbot shook his head, embarrassed by the praise. "I am unable to rid my mind of obscure facts, Chief Librarian, that is all. Most of it is clutter that I would rather be rid of, but I am glad to have helped you. I would rather help you on the battlefield, though. Perhaps I still could? I can still-" he was about to say more when he saw the Blood Angels waiting at the bottom of the steps. He laughed. "And there they are, just as you both said."

Mephiston did not acknowledge his fellow Librarian's and continued to grip the abbot by the shoulder. "you have helped me enough. Stay with your books today, Father Orsuf."

The fire faded from the abbot's eyes and he nodded, smiling sadly.

"I understand." He gave Mephiston and Mariah an awkward bow. "Good luck old friends. Perhaps we will meet again." Then he headed back into his library, laughing to himself. "Wise beyond my years."

Mephiston and Mariah swept down the steps, their cloaks billowing behind them and their gazes even more intense than usual.

"I know what we must do." Mephiston said, reaching Rhacelus.

Rhacelus gripped his arm. "You know where the blade is?"

Mephiston shook his head. "But the abbot has shared more than I could have expected. He is brave to break with traditions that surround him, but he is a man of rare insight. He understands the mistakes that have been made here. I will explain as we travel to the amphitheatre." He handed a book to Antros and walked on. "We do not have long," he said as he led them back through the abbey. "And there is much to be done before we meet the Arch-Cardinal. Have you heard from Vatrenus?"

"Yes," said Rhacelus. "They are heading for the gated to the amphitheatre, as you ordered. And looking for some kind of sluice gate?"

Mephiston nodded. "Good. That building is ancient even by the standards of this city. Its secrets are warded by sorcery that neither I nor Mariah understand. I will need Vatrenus to use simple brawn."

Antros could see the distant terraces of the amphitheatre as their armoured boots clattered over the cobbles. As they descended from the hilltop, they began to encounter large groups of excited priests and gangs of battle weary soldiers, their hollow cheeked faces reinvigorated by the drowning prayers broadcast by the hymnals overhead.

Antros noticed that many of the people they passed were holding something in their fists, something that glittered and flashed as they rushed through the patches of morning light between walkways and bridges. Eventually one of the zealots came close enough that he saw what it was: a bladeless silver sword handle.

"The Blade Petrific is the cornerstone of their faith," said Mephiston, sensing Antros' unspoken question. "To speak its name is forbidden. They rarely make such open demonstrations of their faith."

"What kind of sect is this?" asked Rhacelus glaring at the crowds rushing past. "What do these barbarians have to hide? Besides their ignorance, that is."

They had reached a narrow footbridge that soared across a maze of distant streets. Mephiston had led them out of the main flow of the crowd and toward a quieter district. "They are true to the Emperor," he said flatly. "They are no heretics. They are not even particularly unorthodox." He paused as a regiment of dragoons jogged past, lasrifles slung on their backs as they hurried to join the masses heading towards the amphitheatre. They where flamboyantly dressed with gleaming brass cuirasses and tall, plumed helmets, but they all bore scars and their fatigues were torn and bloodstained. They were clearly hardened fighters.

As the long column of troops rushed by, some of them glanced in surprise at the Blood Angels and a few even had the presence of mind to salute as they passed, but it was clear from their blissful, transported expressions that they were as ecstatic as the priests. As the last few stomped past, Antros noticed a familiar symbol engraved across their breastplate: the same, ornate, upside down T that Prester Cyriak had tattooed on his forehead. He finally made the connection that he imagined that his Brothers and sister had already made – the upside down T was a sword hilt.

"Their faith centres on the Emperor," continued Mephiston, once the long column of soldiers and tanks had finally passed. "But it is a faith clouded by myths and ancestor worship." He nodded at the books he had given Antros. "The abbot has shared much of this knowledge with me. He told me the true meaning to the Children of the Vow – they are sworn, above all, to preserve the safety and mystery of the Blade Petrific. Every precept and ritual is intended to ensure its secrecy – even from the rest of the Adeptus Ministorum."

"Why?" asked Antros, as they continued over the bridge, away from the dragoons. "if they are not traitors, why keep secrets from their own brothers?"

"They have been beguiled by faith," replied Mephiston, stopping to examine a doorway. The bone-wrought lintel had been contorted to resemble a great eagle's claw, grasping the door in its bleached talons. There were symbols carved into the columns on either side of its perch and Mephiston began tracing them with his finger, trying to discern their meaning. "Confessor Zin described their colourful creation myths, but you will remember that he stopped short of telling us the crux of the vow. Father Orsuf was not so coy. The priests on Divinus Prime believe that it is their sacred task to preserve the Blade Petrific in sorcery because one day the God-Emperor will rise from his golden throne to reclaim it. And, as long as they have kept his blade safe, he will begin a day of wrath that will cleanse the galaxy of unbelief. The greatest fear is that some pugnacious warrior might decide to use the blade as an actual weapon and take it from its shrine."

"As you mean to do?" said Antros.

Mephiston gave no reply, absorbed by the runes on the pillar he was examining, but Antros and Rhacelus exchanged meaningful glances, while Mariah was watching. Even in this quiet street they could hear the thousands of fanatics pouring through the city behind them.

"Thank you Father Orsuf," said Mephiston as the characters on the columns pulsed into life, lit by a cerulean fire that flickered and danced, lighting up the Chief Librarian's corpse like features.

The light swelled in brightness and the ossified door unravelled itself, the bones sliding and unlooping like laces being unfastened from a boot. After a few seconds, they were left facing a long, gloomy hallway that led to a second door.

Mephiston and Mariah strode into the shadows and the other two Blood Angels hurried after them. Watching over the second door was a bored looking Guardsman, dressed in the same blue and brass uniform as the dragoons they had passed on the bridge. At the sight of the Blood Angels he grabbed his lasrifle and aimed, his eyes wide with alarm as he registered the size of the four warriors storming down the hallway towards him.

"Halt!" he cried. "You're not allowed In here! If you don't-"

The guard's words were cut short by a single glance from Mariah. The guard froze, statue like, his mouth wide open, as though he were a character in a painting.

Trapping the man in a fragment of time was a minor display of psychic power and Mephiston, Rhacelus and Antros barely registered it, following Mephiston and Mariah without comment as they strode on past the inanimate figure and through the door.

It led them into a small antechamber that in turn led them to a sweeping staircase. At the top of the stairs they walked out onto a broad, circular balcony, hundreds of feet in diameter and looking down over a strange looking hall. It was lit by several large braziers that revealed an army or supine corpses. The bodies completely filled the floor of the large chamber, and it reminded Antros of a slaughter house. The corpses were arranged on slabs in neat rows in varying degrees of dismemberment. Some were grinning, skinless cadavers glistening in the torchlight; others were no more than skeletons. There were a dozen or so hooded priests working on the bodies, wielding curved, ceremonial knives and slopping innards into large, ceramic urns. The priests worked in twos. As one sliced and chopped, the other read prayer from a small book, waving his free hand over the gradually disintegrating bodies, drawing shapes in the air.

The air was thick with censer smoke but as the light of the braziers flickered across the balconies it flashed on the Blood Angels' armour, causing the priests to look up in surprise. There were priests up on the balcony too, and at the sight of the Blood Angels some of them cried out and started hurrying towards them. Mephiston reached out into the fumes and needles of crimson light flickered through the vapours. Before the priests had taken more than a few steps, they were jolted to a halt by the same force that had frozen the man at the door.

Mephiston waved for the other three Blood Angels to follow him as he climbed down some steps into the chamber.

"The people of Mormotha do not realise it," said Mephiston, rushing through the fumes, "but their enemy has already breached the gates."

He walked around the mortuary slabs, looking back at Mariah, Rhacelus and Antros. "We must move fast, or the city will be in ruins by nightfall and there will be an army between us and the Blade Petrific."

"My lord," said Rhacelus. "What else have you seen? What is your plan?" He glanced at the static figures that surrounded them. "They may be an uncouth mob, but they are imperial citizens."

Mephiston tapped one of the blood filled vials hanging at his belt. "I have drunk deep of Father Orsuf's learning. His blood may be old and thin, but it is rich with knowledge. I have tasted the entire history of this city. A fascinating subject."

He made his way past the rows of bodies and pointed Vitarus at a doorway at the far side of the chamber. "These mortuaries are scattered across the city, linked by miles of catacombs."

as the neared the door, Mephiston waved his sword slightly and it hissed open. "We will not need to fight our way through the crowds." He led them into an arrow-straight, vaulted passageway, lined with braziers and decorated with gruesome friezes demonstrating the obscure funerary rites of the Vow. "This passageway will bring us out into the amphitheatre, near were the Arch-Cardinal intends to make his speech."

Cadaverous faces loomed out of the shadows, grinning in the firelight as the Blood Angels hurried past the mosaics.

Antros staggered to a halt as Mephiston fell and slumped against Mariah, shaking his head, as though attacked by a swarm of insects.

Rhacelus and Antros stepped towards them, then halted as the Chief Librarian began to ripple and distort, as though seen through falling water. He gave an angry roar and wretched himself and Mariah back from the wall, leaving behind a ghostly mirror image of himself, still shimmering against the mosaics. The slumped Mephiston quickly faded into the shadow as the roaring one lurched off with Mariah down The passageway, before crashing into a pillar with such force the he filled the passageway with dust and elicited a worrying groan from the ceiling. Dozens of ossified bones crashed down around them exploding into dust as they hit the ground.

"Chief Librarian!" gasped Antros as they reached him. He was leaning heavily against the pillar with Mariah stood close by to him and the blood film had washed over his eyes. As Mephiston turned to face them, he held up a hand in warning.

They backed away, but Mephiston's face twisted with pain and he seemed unable to lower his hand. It started to vibrate and droplets of dark fire dropped from his fingers.

Fingers of light knifed up from beneath their feet as the ground started to crack.

"Mephiston!" cried Rhacelus.

"Calistarius!" cried Mariah, her voice full of love and care, while she was holding on to him.

But Rhacelus and Antros both were looking at her.

"How did you know that would work?" Rhacelus asked

"Well it was obvious when Antros shouted Chief Librarian he did not respond, then you shouted Mephiston then the same thing happened." Answered Mariah

+Tell them Mariah if you think its the right thing to do. I trust your judgement." Mephiston said into her mind.

"Not only that me and Mephiston have been together since he helped me beat the Black Rage." Mariah Told them.

+How are you now Mephiston?+ asked Mariah

+I am fine better now, hearing the emotion in your voice, the worry that you might lose me made me fight to get back to you.+ Replied Mephiston.

+I know this may not go down so well with Dante especially if Antros tells him.+ Said Mariah.

+We have nothing to worry about Mariah, Dante has your biggest secret to hide, I am sure that this has no mark on that, you are my best friend and soul mate, and I am happy with you, I would never let anyone hurt you.+ responded Mephiston.


	15. Chapter 15

Chapter Fifteen

Volgatis, Divinus Prime.

Even after years of discord and violence, Volgatis was unsullied by by war. Only the most desperate of souls would brave the wrath of its protectors. As Livia rode around the final bend of the treacherous mountain path, she rained in her horse, giving Dharmia a chance to admire the magnificence of the holy fortress. The convent knifed up from a spur of the mountain, hung over a sheer drop, thousands of feet high. The bottom of the chasm was hidden beneath the clouds that drifted far below. The gleaming white talon soared up out of sight, but also plunged down into the mountainside, its myriad lights glittering in the dark like seams of gold. It looked like an ice blade thrust into the mountain by a god.

Dharmia looked back down the moonlit path and saw the others riding up towards them. The men were all swaying in their saddles, exhausted by the furious ride and coated in a glittering layer of frost.

"Will they just let us in?" Dharmia asked, pounding her frozen arms, trying to recover some feeling in her limbs. She looked up at the pinpricks of light that covered the tower. "Do Seraphim like unexpected guests?"

"They are Children of they Vow, just like we are," replied Livia. "Besides," she said, nodding down the mountainside, "they will be glad of the extra guns." Livia was wearing her usual, sardonic smile, but Dharmia noticed it was not quite as convincing as normal.

Dharmia looked where she was pointing and saw the long, coiling snake of lights that lay across the plains. Pieter Zorambus was less than a day behind them and his army had grown even larger as he marched towards Volgatis. The new converts inspired by the miracle of Hesbon's wings. Dharmia guessed that the apostates now numbered several thousand.

Livia clicked the horse into motion and they crunched across the ice towards the gates of the fortress. The doors were hundreds of feet tall and the final approach was covered by an enormous portico. Rather than columns the vast porch was supported by four colossal statues, each of them kneeling, heads bowed, with the gabled roof of the portico in their huge hands. "The seraphim will have heard of our losses," said Livia as they rode into the shadow beneath the porch, "and our refusal to join with the Unbegotten Prince. They will not question our loyalty. They will know what we have endured to honour the Vow, so it would not occur to them that we might wish to remove the blade."

The gates were closed. They reached up into the night sky like another limb of the mountain, blocking out the stars as Dharmia and Livia rode towards them.

"We bring our faith and our guns!" cried Livia, rising up in her saddle as the others rode up behind them, gathering before the gates. "We are Children of the Vow and we have come to preserve that which must be preserved."

Her words echoed strangely around the gully and there was no reply.


	16. Chapter 16

Chapter Sixteen

Mormotha, Divinus Prime.

They called it a miracle, but Antros knew it for what it was: an abomination. As the Blood Angels emerged from the catacombs, back up onto the streets of Mormotha, a bright, clear dawn was breaking, revealing the sky fully for the first time since they had arrived on Divinus Prime. Antros paused at the top of some steps, high above the streets, and stared at the scene overhead. It was Mormotha, reflected so clearly that he could make out every roof and spire in perfect detail, but the city in the sky was a nightmare of Mormotha, a world so tainted by madness that Antros' eyes began to hurt as he studied it.

In the Mormotha of the sky, silver-skinned serpents flickered between the crowds of priests, hundreds of feet long and carried on pale, translucent wings, Ossuary temples flowed like liquid, morphing constantly into new forms, the large buildings swallowing the smaller ones before unfurling into new, even stranger shapes. And the priests who ran through this lunacy were distorted, elongated counterfeits of the priests below. As the city in the sky moved ever closer to the real city, its silent inhabitants were stretching and dropping towards reality, like droplets of paint, hanging from a frieze that was pealing away from the firmament.

Horrific though it was, Antros could not drag his gaze from the surreal scene over head. He saw that, just like in the real city, there was a vast amphitheatre, crammed with thousands of burning bodies but in this likeness, the burning mutants were not screaming but dancing, revelling in the flames that were transforming their flesh. Rather than becoming blackened husks, their bodies were crystallising, growing glass like as the cavorted and leapt through the fire. Seeing it so clearly for the first time, Antros realised that the mirror world in the sky was actually the past. The fires in the amphitheatre, were only just taking hold. He was seeing the world as it was a few moments earlier. It was as though the reflection took a few minutes to assimilate the changes below and recreate them- there was a slight lag between the two versions of reality.

"Is it getting closer?" asked Rhacelus. He was standing beside Antros but his words were directed at Mephiston and Mariah, who were standing a few feet ahead of them, further down the steps, studying the rusty bolt Mephiston had snatched from Dravus.

Mephiston secreted the bolt beneath his cloak and nodded. "The reflection will soon devour the reality. I see not that this Miracle is intended to do more than simply hide Divinus Prime." He looked up at the glittering figures in the sky. "This world is being fractured and transformed by sorcery, and if I do not halt it soon," he looked up at the undulating architecture above him, "we will be walking those streets instead of these, and Divinus prime will be lost forever, along with the Blade Petrific."

"What will we do now, my lord?" asked Antros, looking back at the real Mormotha. The streets were flooded with wailing, grief stricken priests who had not made it into the amphitheatre. Those that could get near had tried to break down the gates to save those within, but the stone would not give and all they could do was listen to the screams echoing through the walls. Most had no idea of the heretical transformations that had consumed their brethren; they thought that thousands of innocents were being burned alive.

"Dravus confirmed what I had already learned from Father Orsuf," said Mephiston. "The Blade Petrific is in Volgatis. But if Dravus was right, Pieter Zorambus is already at the gates. He will take the blade this very morning if we do not arrive to stop him."

"My lord," said Rhacelus, "how far is it?"

Mephiston shook his head. "Hundreds of miles to the north, from memory, but I only glanced at the maps." He nodded to the book he had given Antros when they left the abbey. "Every shrine and temple is marked, Volgatis included. Take a look."

Antros unclasped the book and leafed through the maps and illuminated texts until he found the word Volgatis. He traced his finger over the measurements on the map and shook his head. "It's a convent of some kind. Heavily fortified. Built right at the peak of a mountain – the highest peak of the Tamarus Mountains. Nearly three hundred miles north of here." He peered closer at the pages. "Father Orsuf has made notes in the margins. The order of the Hallowed Gate. And another word. I can't quite make it out. Seraphim, perhaps."

Rhacelus glanced at Mephiston and Mariah. "Adepta Sororitas?"

Mephiston and Mariah nodded. "It makes sense. If the Ecclesiarchy place so much importance on this world, they will have stationed Sisters of Battle here to watch over it. Pieter Zorambus has half the planet at his back, though. Even the Adepta Sororitas will find it hard to hold out against such numbers. We need to get there fast. Mormotha has a space port. You probably saw it when we were up by the abbey. It is in this very district, not far from the amphitheatre. There looked to be aircraft there."

Rhacelus nodded. "If we fly we could reach Volgatis in minutes rather than hours."

Mephiston spoke into his vox. "Captain Vatrenus. Do not head for the gate. Make for the space port."

"Understood, Chief Librarian," came the reply, the captain's words were accompanied by a chorus of screaming blasts – the unmistakable sound of las-fire.

"Have you engaged more of the mutants, Vatrenus?"

"No, my lord, not mutants – just the local troops. They do not understand what happened in the amphitheatre. My explanation fell on deaf ears. I have-" His words broke off and the sharp report of bolter-fire barked over the vox-network. "The idiots think we are the enemy."

Antros looked down the steps and saw that the locals who were not fleeing from the fire were pointing in their direction, their faces twisted with grief and rage. There was a flash of gold as dragoons began spilling out of the doorway.

Antros unholstered his bolt pistol, but Mephiston shook his head. "Me and Mariah have killed enough of these people for one day. They have been lied to, but not all of them are as wretched as the Arch-Cardinal. We should spare them if we can."

Antros found it hard to lower his gun. The bloodlust that had consumed him in the amphitheatre was still there, hovering at the back of his thoughts. As he watched the dragoons approaching, their las-guns raised, he felt an overwhelming urge to storm down the steps and tear into them. He could almost taste their blood splashing into his mouth. He shook his head and recited the litanies of restraint he had learned as an acolyte, muttering the words as a mantra until he was calm enough to lower the gun and look away from the soldiers.

He clicked his data slate from his armour and called up the schematic of the city. "You're right. We are just a few streets away from the space port, my lord." he said waving to an avenue behind them that was clear of people.

Mephiston nodded for Antros to lead the way and they ran down the steps as gunfire lashed out from the nearby buildings, scattering chunks of architecture across the road as the Guardsmen's shots failed to find their mark or skimmed harmlessly off the Blood Angels' power armour.

After just a few minutes they reached the control towers and hangars of the space port. The structures were as intricately wrought as the rest of Mormotha – a spiralling mass of coiled fossils that looked to be completely deserted. There were dozens of aircraft dotted around in various states of repair, including some Valkyries, hunched in their hangers like enormous carrion birds, their fuselages painted a dull black and their wings seeming to sag under an impressive array of missiles and lascannons. Most of the aircraft looked battle ready and in good repair.

Mephiston and Mariah were already striding towards the hangers with Rhacelus at their side, making for a large, ancient-looking transport ship.

As Antros hurried after them, he saw a block of red power armour rushing towards them from the south side of the square. Captain Vatrenus and his men moved with the same martial discipline Antros would expect. Their armour was dented, scorched and drenched in blood, but none of them showed signs of injury.

Vatrenus saluted as he reached Mephiston, and the Chief Librarian turned to face him.

"Captain," said Mephiston with a nod.

"My lord," replied Vatrenus. He removed his helmet and his expression betrayed his annoyance. "I should not have cut things so fine. If you had explained to me why we needed to close those gates I might have-"

"You might have what?" interrupted Mephiston, genuinely confused. "I gave you a clear order, Captain Vatrenus. What difference would my reasoning have made?"

Vatrenus opened his mouth to argue, then caught Mariah's outraged glare and simply nodded, muscles rippling across his clamped jaw.

Mephiston nodded at the transport ship. "We need to leave now."

Captain Vatrenus looked up at the vehicle with a raised eyebrow. It was like an ugly, overgrown relative of the Valkyries in the other hangers and it had clearly seen better days. Sections of the armour had rusted away and the fuel tanks were hanging from the fuselage at a very unhealthy angle. Vatrenus turned to the Techmarine. "Brother Gallus?"

Gallus had been forced to fight his way out across the terraces of the amphitheatre alone, and his armour was more damaged that the rest of the Blood Angels, but he replied with a brisk nod. "Captain," he said, clambering up into the aircraft and heading for the cockpit.

As the transport ship's thrusters roared into life, hurling it over the walls of the city, Antros gave Mormotha one last look. The flames were already spreading through the streets, sending great plumes of smoke up through the bone spiral towers. The Labyrinth had become a funeral pyre.


	17. Chapter 17

Chapter seventeen

Mariah's background.

While they were flying over Divinus Prime to get to Volgatis Antros asked Mariah.

"Tell us a bit about your self Mariah?"

Mariah responded.

"well when I look back on child hood I can remember my father but not my mother, I actually don't have any memory at all of my mother it's like she never existed to me or was never there. I remember my training very well, I was the only woman in my unit until, I was pulled out by Mephiston I became his apprentice, you may think he is hard on you but he has seen plenty of Lexicanium like you not survive wars like this so he is just preparing you. Yes Antros I am older than you I'm not a trainee any more that's why you call me by my title Lady Mariah. Yes I have been through the Black Rage that is why I'm more like Mephiston than Rhacelus."

"But in the catacombs under Mormotha you knew to call Lord Mephiston by his old name, how?" asked Antros.

"It was obvious Antros look at it this way I knew him as Calistarius, I knew him before he became Mephiston, so you can imagine how hard it was for me to be trained by my once best friend knowing that Mephiston had replaced him. As for how did I know well you tried Chief Librarian and he didn't respond, then Rhacelus tried Mephiston that didn't work either so the only other option was me putting all the love and emotion I could into Calistarius, and he responded and that wasn't because of the name it is because I am scared that I may lose him if we do not make it to Volgatis before Pieter Zorambus," answered Mariah.

During the flight Mariah and Rhacelus could see that Mephiston wasn't him self he was starting to lose control again so Mariah tried the only thing she could think of at the time. She took her gauntlet off and placed her wrist to Mephiston's mouth.

"Drink, Mephiston, it may help you a bit better," she said.

"Mariah are you crazy?" asked Rhacelus.

"No just trust me Rhacelus, I know what I am doing," answered Mariah. She looked at him and said through the link.

+Mephiston please just drink, I told you I would do this if I had to, don't forget I'm Sanguinius' daughter my blood may be the only way to help you until we get the Blade Petrific.+

+Mariah I cant your blood is too precious, you cant do this not now.+ responded Mephiston'.

+Yes I can. You have to try it please Mephiston I cant lose you. I need you more than anything you know that since the death of my Father you and Dante are the only ones that know the truth and the only ones that are willing to keep it a secret cause you both know I don't want to be treated any differently.+ she replied

+Mariah I will try it only for you and sooner or later it will come out who you are what if Roboute Guilliman shows up and asks Captain Vatrenus how his niece is or something like that, they will know then. You will never lose me just like I know I will never lose you or at least I hope I wont any way.+ said Mephiston.

+No you wont lose me, you are stuck with me now no matter what I am always going to be here and be a reminder of your past, just kidding we are who we are no matter what happens we cant change who we are or who we have become, you are the Lord of Death and I wouldn't want to change who you are.+ muttered Marian.

+You are the Lady of Death well that's what you will be once everyone finds out about us, oh and I love you Mariah don't ever forget that no matter what happens I will always love you,+ Mephiston said.

+I love you too, just promise me one thing if you have to do another blood ritual that we do it together, you know we are stronger as one than we are apart.+ Mariah said

+I promise Mariah,+ Mephiston answered, as he took some of her blood, Rhacelus noticed how much of a difference it made to Mephiston how much it helped him stay in control of what he had become.

"Mariah how did you know that would have worked?" asked Rhacelus and Antros.

"I didnt it was just a thought, his oaths are not working as well as they should yes they work well on Baal but not on Divinus Prime this is to do with Chaos this Miracle who ever has done this I think its more to do with trying to get me and Mephiston here to this retched shrine world, I think this is a game and I have a theory who knows about this but until I have more proof I am not going to tell." Said Mariah while looking at Mephiston making sure that he was ok.

Antros looked at Rhacelus then Mephiston trying to figure out what Mariah was on about.

"Mariah what did you mean by that?" he asked.

"Antros I am not telling that is between me and Mephiston when I do finally tell him then he will leave it to Dante to do what he needs to do." Mariah responded.

During the flight to Volgatis Mariah had fallen asleep on Mephiston's shoulder but while she was asleep she was having visions of the future like it was a nightmare and she started to flicker and twitch until she woke up and she looked frightened then Mephiston said to her through the link they shared.

+Mariah what did you see? Are you ok?+

+Yes I am fine and its nothing, nothing we should be worried about right now lets just focus on what we need to do here, focus on helping this world get rid of their heretics.+ replied Mariah.

Mephiston was looking at her with a look of concern which was very uncharacteristic. When Mariah looked up at Mephiston she smiled at him to try and give him some hope that it wasn't important at the moment. Then she looked at Antros and Rhacelus and said.

"look this is normal for me I have nightmares, I have had them since I began my training and now since I have beaten the black rage they seem to be getting worse more clear, but I still can see the meaning of them, the first one was just after Dante introduced me to Mephiston, that same night I had a dream that Calistarius was still alive that he was trying to tell me something like he was trying to tell me he was still alive, so I did some digging that when I found out that Mephiston was once Calistarius yes it was a killer at first then, the dreams kept getting more detailed like it was showing me what will happen in the future, I didn't believe them till now."

Neither Antros nor Rhacelus could answer her they just kept looking between her and Mephiston.


	18. Chapter 18

Chapter Eighteen

A Secret Conversation.

While on the journey to Volgatis Mephiston and Mariah where talking to each other through the link that they shared.

+Mariah I know this seems like an odd question but, what is going on with you, you seem so different from when I first met you?+ Mephiston said.

+Yeah that was an odd question Mephiston, I haven't changed that much have I? Or maybe I have, I haven't really noticed, if you say I have changed then I must have is it for the better or worse though?+ Mariah asked.

+That was a daft question Mariah, for the better you are not the scared person you used to be which is what I love about you, you seem to see things the rest of us don't notice till last minute or you seem to be able to get backup in when you know we are gonna need it.+ Mephiston replied.

+If I told you I have been getting weird images of the future, you wouldn't think any less of me would you, would you still love me?+ Asked Mariah.

+no I wouldn't think any less of you, and of course I would still love you, what made you think I wouldn't, we are all the same, Librarians all have this problem don't ever doubt yourself Mariah.+ Said Mephiston.

+I was not doubting myself, ok maybe I was a little bit but that was because of the question that you asked me,+ Mariah muttered.

+Ok I am sorry if that question made you think any less of your abilities you are the best Librarian I have Mariah you are stronger and smarter than most of us could have ever thought, not even Dante seen this one,+ Mephiston reassured her.

+Thanks hunny that has just made me feel a lot better, but what I don't understand is why cant Antros see what you can see in me, it like he sees me as some kine of heretic, like I don't belong here,+ said Mariah.

+It's not that he cant see it Mariah, its because you are a female and stronger than him that he does not like I am surprised that he has not gone to Dante before now.+ Mephiston responded.

+I don't think he is that stupid to go against your orders, I know I'm not and I am your girl not even Rhacelus is that stupid.+ Mariah said with a giggle.

+You know I haven't heard that in a long time that giggle is what made me choose you over everyone else to be my apprentice you reminded me of my self at one point before the Black Rage got me.+ commented Mephiston.

+Wow thanks for that compliment there, I may remind you of yourself before the Black Rage but look at what you have accomplished since then you have saved the Blood Angels plenty of times, and you have saved me on more than one occasion, you know I would return it if the roles were reversed.+ Mariah said.

+I know you would, look lets hope that it never comes down to that, you risk your life enough for me when I go on missions on a whim, plus you know half the time I never know what is going to happen when.+ Mephiston muttered.

+Yes I know that, but being what we are, we would sacrifice ourselves for the people that matter most like I would sacrifice myself for you, as you are more important than I am.+ Mariah confirmed.

+No, Mariah, the most important person in this Chapter is you, if you die the future of the Blood Angels go with you, I don't want you to sacrifice yourself for no one not even me.+ Mephiston said.

+True but it doesn't stop me when it comes to saving you I would always sacrifice my self for you no matter what you need to survive you are important my father would not have helped you beat the Black Rage if he didn't have great things planned for you.+ Mariah said.

+Mariah, do you enjoy telling me things straight to the point, I know I have great things planned for me and one of them is keeping you alive, you may not see how special you are but the rest of us do, don't forget I am older than you and I have been doing this longer than you.+ Mephiston responded.

+Ok, what do you know about me that I don't and please I don't want to argue, I have been trying to remember things from my past, I can remember so much because there is a line to it, but the one thing I cant remember is my mother it's like she never existed or was never there. I can remember my father but not her.+ Mariah answered.

+Mariah I can not answer that question for you the only one that know that answer is Dante and well you will have to wait for that answer as he is on Baal and we are on Divinus Prime.+ Mephiston responded.

+Well I suppose I will have to wait then.+ said Mariah.

With that Captain Vatrenus informed them that they were close to Volgatis or that they were having engine trouble.


	19. Chapter 19

Chapter Nineteen

Divinus Prime.

The transport ship banked hard, screaming through the clouds. Every part of it was rattling and clanging as it dived towards Volgatis. Antros wondered which would come away first, the wings or the tail fins.

Captain Vatrenus sat with the Techmarine, Gallus, at the front of the cockpit. Gallus punched the controls with what seemed to be arbitrary violence and klaxons barked as they hurtled towards the ground. A jet of smoke whistled from somewhere near Antros' head.

"Volgatis in three minutes," muttered Rhacelus, strapped into the seat beside Antros.

Mephiston grunted a curse, sounding in pain.

"My lord?" said Rhacelus, looking over at Mariah and the Chief Librarian.

Since they had left the ground, Mephiston's tremors had grown worse and every few seconds trails of dark lightening would crackle across his skin, and his eyes would cloud over with blood. He was clutching at his left arm constantly. The higher they flew, the more violent the tremors became.

"Should we land?" asked Rhacelus. "We will reach the fortress in moments."

"Something is coming," said Mephiston, staring at the floor of the cabin. "Ready the guns," he said. "We will need-"

Something heavy slammed into the side of the transport ship.

A new set of klaxons started blaring as the aircraft rolled on to its side.

"Throne!" growled Gallus, struggling to grip the controls as part of the dashboard tore free.

"What was that?" asked Antros, staring through the armoured glass.

The air was a riot of colours; pink and blue shapes were spiralling all around them.

Another weight slammed against the fuselage, then another.

"Daemons!" snapped Gallus, triggering a barrage of Las-blasts.

The cockpit lit up, and Antros saw liquid blue shapes disintegrating all around them, rippled from the sky.

There was a tearing sound from beneath their seats as another of the daemons thudded into the ship.

Lights flashed on the controls. "Two minutes to Volgatis," said Gallus.

More daemons smashed against the hull and this time, some if them managed to latch on. Something hammered against the transport, right beside Antros. Then a pink heaving mass smashed through the fuselage, reaching out towards him. Its face consisted of gaping, incisor-crammed jaws, snarling and slavering in it flesh. It thrashed furiously from side to side, trying to bury its teeth into Antros' face as he held it at arm's length. It was clutching a long ornate blade and drew it back to stab at him.

Antros recited a passage from The Glutted Scythe. Lightening pulsed through his hand, ripping the daemon's face apart. It screamed wildly and flew back, but as it tumbled away it hurled Antros with it.

He cried out, shocked by the daemon's strength as it wretched him through the broken fuselage and out onto the wing of the aircraft. A mortal man would have been hurled to his death, but Antros gripped one of the wing's exposed ribs, hanging on even as the aircraft howled up through the clouds.

The daemon drew back its sword to strike but Antros called out another invocation and blasted it apart.

Antros reached back towards the hole he had been wretched through but, before he could drag himself through, he saw that the remnants of the daemon's flesh had slapped down on the wing, reformed into blue-skinned daemons that were equally as grotesque as the one that had birthed them.

They threw themselves at Antros with a peevish, whining sound, mouths opening in the centre of their contorted chests.

Antros caught the first daemon in his fist and pummelled it onto the wing with a flash of psychic energy. This time he scorched it into a blackened husk, avoiding any further rebirths.

The second daemon thudded into him and they both crashed back inside the aircraft.

Mariah went to help him.

"Mariah you stay with Mephiston and help him stay in control, and I will go and help Antros," said Rhacelus.

Antros was sprawled across the broken seats as the whining daemon thrashed and lunged at him, talons and blades clattering against his power armour.

Rhacelus' sword came down through its neck and crimson fire lashed across it shifting flesh, lighting it up in a dazzling display of sparks.

The daemon fell back and Antros booted it through the hole, sending it plunging through the clouds. Then he lay still for a moment, breathing heavily as the transport ship lurched and juddered beneath him.

Another series of blows struck the aircraft and more of the windows broke, filling the cabin with noise and fumes.

"We won't make it," said Mephiston, raising his voice above the din. "Two minutes is too long. Climb," he said.

Gallus yanked the controls back and they sliced through the clouds with the daemons screaming up after them.

"When shell I level out?" cried Gallus, struggling to be heard. Ahead of them was the mirror image of Divinus Prime that filled the heavens. Antros could see clouds and the transport ship reflected as they had been a few minutes earlier, before the daemons attacked.

"Keep climbing!" shouted Mephiston.

"My lord," Gallus sounded surprised. "Into the…?"

Mephiston nodded.

As they approached the miracle, Mariah gripped on to Mephiston's arm and, Antros felt the urge to hold his breath, as though they were about to break the surface of a lake.

Then they were through.

Sound vanished. The klaxons, the screaming wind, everything; it all stopped, enveloping the transport ship in silence.

Antros laughed as ideas exploded in his mind. A thousand revelations hit him at once.

"Dive," whispered Mephiston.

Brother Gallus did not respond. He had the same dazed expression as Antros. "Everything..." he muttered, shaking his head and frowning.

Captain Vatrenus cursed and lent over, grabbing the controls and shoving them into a dive.

Fury boiled through Antros as he realised Vatrenus was about to rob him of the wondrous insights that were blossoming in his mind. He lent forwards to wrestle the controls from the captain's grip. He was too late. Deafening reality exploded around them once more. The klaxons and turbulence seemed all the more cacophonous after the silence of the miracle.

"We've reached Volgatis," said Brother Gallus, confused, looking at the controls.

They were surrounded by mountain peaks and directly in front of then were the soaring gates of Volgatis.

They were about to smash straight into them.

Brother Gallus yanked the controls but there was no way they would clear the wall. The battlements hurtled towards them, crowded with battling figures and lit up by dozens of raging fires.

Mephiston and Mariah cried out in a language that Antros did not recognise, and time slowed to a crawl.

They should have smashed into the battlements but, instead, they were surrounded by a torpid blur of crawling shapes.

Mephiston was clutching something in his fist and Antros realised it was the object he had snatched from Dravus. He was studying it closely. Then he looked up at the hazy outlines outside the ship.

"We will have to be quick." He looked around at the other Blood Angels. "The impact will be slow, but no less lethal if we are crushed between the wreckage and the wall. Follow my lead."

They all nodded and, a few seconds later, the ship began to shudder and groan, crumpling towards them, concertina-like, in slow motion. It was as though it were made of paper and someone was carefully folding it away.

"Now," said Mephiston, opening his door, then grabbing Mariah and stepping out into the smear of colours with Mariah.

Antros and the others followed. The world was an abstract collage in which nothing made sense, but Antros was relieved to feel solid ground crunching beneath his boots.

They took a few steps and Mephiston indicated they should crouch. Then Mephiston and Mariah turned back to the collapsing transport ship and spoke again in the obscure tongue they had used earlier.

The world regained its usual momentum with a scream of tearing metal and boom of exploding fuel tanks.

Heat washed over Antros and he saw that they were crouched near a gun emplacement at the top of the wall – a gun emplacement that was now crushed beneath the blazing wreckage of the transport ship they had just rammed into the fortress. The scene was so chaotic that the crashed aircraft was barely noticed. Every inch of the fortifications was crowded with battling figures. Not far from the Blood Angels, Seraphim were pounding down from a watchtower towards the walkway at the top of the wall, jump packs roaring as they hurtled towards a heaving throng of daemons, their bolt pistols blazing.

The daemons bounded over the battlements and sprinted forwards, gibbering ecstatically, oblivious to the ferocity of the sisters' gunfire. A forest of pink limbs and flaming tentacles slapped across the stone, some landing only a few feet away from Antros,

as the Sisters of Battle landed on the top of the wall, they drew chainswords and hacked into the daemons, finally halting their advance not far from the smouldering wreckage of the transport ship.

Captain Vatrenus and the rest of the Blood Angels rushed across the walls to join the Sisters as Antros and Rhacelus strode through the fire and surveyed the scene. The Sisters were being enveloped by countless horrors but they held their ground, hacking into the waves of daemons with no sign of fear or hesitation.

As the Blood Angels fired careful, precise shots into the fray, the Seraphim raised their voices, singing wild, amplified hymns as they tore into the daemons.

Antros and Rhacelus raced to join their brothers, their weapons blazing into life as they crossed the wall.

It was only as they crashed into the enemy that Antros realised that there was no sign of Mephiston and Mariah.


	20. Chapter 20

Chapter Twenty

Volgatis, Divinus Prime.

Volgatis was burning. Flames of every hue had spread across the battlements, dancing over corpses and hanging in the air, dripping from the smoke as though reality itself had been set alight. The garish fumes were almost indistinguishable from the screaming daemons that were spiralling through the tumult. Antros tumbled and staggered through this explosion of noise and colour, his bolt pistol barking at the myriad horrors that surrounded him, spewing shells and death. The daemons were not his only problem. As he fought he was being dragged along the top of the walls, wrenched by powerful currents of aetheric power.

The warp storm hauled him up onto the top of a collapsed section of wall and as he rose out of the fumes, he caught a brief glimpse of the battle spread out around him. The walls were crowded with battling figures, but all of them, Seraphim, Blood Angels and daemon alike, were all caught in a furious psychic storm. And at the eye of the storm, Antros found what he had been searching for: Mephiston and Mariah. They stood above the gates, arms spread, and fingers splayed, surrounded by a tornado of lightening and blood. Daemons of every conceivable colour and shape were hurtling towards them, caught in the crimson vortex. Mephiston and Mariah were silhouettes within a fierce, bloody corona, two single points of darkness at the heart of the violence.

Antros dug his heels in the rubble and managed to hold his place. Bones, corpses and daemons rushed passed him as he tried to make out Mephiston and Mariah's face. It was like trying to stare into a black sun. the darkness burned and blinded, making it impossible to see whether the Chief Librarian was still in control of his actions, or consumed by the Gift.

A shriek of giggles alerted Antros to the daemon that was bounding over the ruins towards him. It was a pink jumble of body parts, scampering on eight limbs like a spider, then six, then two, as its body morphed and flipped into a confusing variety of shapes. Only its face remained constant: hideously elongated jaws, quivering hysterically as it hurled a gobbet of pink fire at Antros.

He loosed one hand from the wall and cried out a warding, causing the missile to explode seconds before it hit him. The force of the blast rocked him back on hid heels and kicked him from his perch, throwing him into the fury of Mephiston and Mariah's tornado.

Antros cursed as he rolled and tumbled across the wall, smashing through the rubble with the giggling daemon scuttling after him.

He slammed into a column and managed to grip it, halting his free-fall through the clouds of blood. He braced himself with one hand and extended the other one, palm outwards, towards the daemon.

It gambolled through the air towards him, laughing hysterically and drawing one of its many hands to hurl another ball of warpfire.

Antros howled an evocation, lines of energy crackled down from his psychic hood and along his extended arm, becoming a white-hot blast that tore from his palm towards the daemon's face.

The daemon's head vanished before the blast hit, and reappeared on its side, still giggling, as its body formed an O shape, allowing Antros' blast to ripple uselessly over the wall behind it.

Sprouting even more limbs, the daemon grabbed a bent girder and hurled itself at Antros, crashing into him like a sack of thrashing eels.

Antros fell back, caught once again in the currents of Mephiston and Mariah's conjuration.

He rolled across the ground, the daemon latched on to him, pummelling his face and chest with its fists and stabbing a serpentine blade into the mask of his helmet.

The daemon's sword was not made of any real, physical material and It cut through the unbreakable ceramite of Antros' faceplate. Fumes and heat washed over his face as the daemon's blade raked through his jaw, rending muscle and bone with a flash of pain. Pain suppressants kicked in immediately but blood rushed from his helmet, filling his eyes, blinding them as the daemon's teeth shredded bone and ceramite.

Antros jolted to a halt, jamming his feet into the rubble and looking around. Volgatis was littered with dead Seraphim. The Adepta Sororitas had been almost entirely overwhelmed by the daemons. He scoured the walls for sight of living Seraphim and could only see a few, huddled in small groups, blasting at the warp horrors with the same well-drilled accuracy they had shown in the first hours of the battle, but unable to see through the psychic storm. There were no more than a few dozen of them left alive, but none of them showed any sign of fear or doubt.

He saw Blood Angels firing too, but they were also scattered and divided – caught in the blood storm emanating from Mariah and their Chief Librarian Mephiston.

He yelled into his vox. "Squad Seriphus?"

"Lexicanium Antros?" came a reply over the vox-network. "Is that you? This is Captain Vatrenus. We are-" Vatrenus broke off and there was a crack of bolter fire, followed by daemonic shrieks of laughter. "Wretched warp spawn. Yes I am with Squad Seriphus. we're pinned down by this damned storm. can't reach you. Can't-" He broke off again to fire more shots. "No sign of Squad Hestias. Are they with you?"

"No," replied Antros.

"Is this the daemons' magic?" gasped Vatrenus.

"No. Mephiston and Mariah's." Antros was unsure what else to say.

"Hold your position," said Vatrenus. "We will get to you."

Antros was about reply when the air exploded with movement and noise. A storm of the screaming shark-like daemons rippled through the fumes, their jaws gaping as they dived towards him.

He blasted the first with a thunderbolt so powerful it broke the daemon in half, the pieces slamming back into the second and causing it to spin off into the smoke.

The third hit him, hurling them both back onto the battlements.

He fell on his back with the daemon thrashing on top of him. Both his hands were locked on its jaws, trying to hold it at bay, but the daemon was charged with warp energy and the teeth were already bearing down on his already wounded head. He chanted obscure, Baalite phrases, opening his mind to the same invisible currents that were powering his attacker. Strength rippled through his muscles and he rose to his feet with a howl, smashing the daemon to the ground. Then he drew his bolt pistol and tore it into pieces with a deafening barrage of shots.

Dozens more of the daemons sliced towards him through the smoke, but Antros was so enraged he relished the chance to face more of them.

He was almost disappointed when a wall of muzzle flashes erupted in the smoke to his right. The daemons disintegrated, leaving just a final, wounded wreck for Antros to stamp his foot on and execute with a few rounds from his bolt pistol.

A sister of battle strode through the rubble towards him, her gun still smoking. She was battered and bloody and surrounded by her dead sisters, but she saluted Antros calmly.

"Son of Sanguinius," she yelled over the din of battle. "The Astra Angelus is he here?"

"Astra Angelus?" Antros asked, surprised. "Confessor Zin used that name. I did not think it was known here.

They ducked as a series of Las-blasts detonated the wall behind them.

"We know who the Astra Angelus is," she cried, struggling to be heard. "We understand why you are here."

More Seraphim stumbled through the storm towards him and gathered around her, looking at Antros. "Where is your Lord?" She asked.

Antros waved them on and clambered through the wrecked aircraft, trying to lead them through the psychic tumult towards Mariah and the Chief Librarian were at it's heart.

He dragged himself over another piece of shattered wall and they looked down on Mephiston and Mariah. They looked like something from one of Zin's tales. Colossal arcs of power were coursing through the skies, knifing down from the clouds and flashing across the frozen crowns of the mountains, all of them terminating at Mephiston and Mariah's upraised arms.

"The Lord and Lady of Death," said Antros, awed by what he was seeing. As the lights connected with Mephiston and Mariah, they flashed out across the steep-sided valley. Hundreds of crimson strands, a network of lethal blood magic, each thread skewering a daemon. The Chief Librarian and Mariah were the nexus of a vast wed of energy, linking them to every warp entity within sight of Volgatis. Most of them were gathered beneath a huge porch that led to the gates, between the feet of the giant statues, and, as Mephiston and Mariah's magic tore through them, they were rooted to the spot, juddering and twitching as the blood consumed them.

The air was buckling under their wrath. More crimson threads lashed out through their fingers, piercing the pink, giggling daemons on the battlements. A dome of red power spread out over Antros' head slashing through hundreds of malformed silhouettes and fixing them in place.

Antros loosed his grip on the walls and gave himself to the gravitic pull of the blood storm. He bounced and crashed over the icy battlements until he was close enough to see the Chief Librarian and Mariah better. Some of the Sisters managed to follow, gripping tightly to the embrasures as they battled with the furious current. Then Antros crawled over a shattered lintel and managed to get near the top of the gates, close enough to see Mephiston and Mariah's faces as they began the next stage of their rite.

Mephiston and Mariah remained utterly calm. Their battleplate were chipped and splattered with daemon-filth, but Mephiston was completely in control of his powers. They closed their extended hands, clenching them into fists, and as they did so every daemon held by their blood lightening crumpled and snapped. The screams shifted in pitch to something desperate, rather than rapacious, and the inhuman giggles broke into staccato, confused bursts that sounded more like chocking than mirth.

As Mephiston and Mariah's fists closed completely, the daemons imploded, sucked from reality like water whirling down a hole.

Then there was quiet. No screams. No gunfire. Everything ceased. The only sound left was the gentle moan of the wind, rushing across the frozen peaks.

The psychic force that had been dragging Antros towards his lord and lady ceased and he fell backwards, wrong-footed by the sudden absence of resistance. He landed in a mound of blood-slick rubble and saw that Mephiston and Mariah had lowered their hands and was staring out across the corpse-strewn valley.

Every one of the daemons had vanished, but a newcomer was emerging from the distant banks of snow. It was a warrior in gleaming white plate riding bareback on a massive snake-like creature that had gaudy wings and a long, bird-like head.

+He is more significant than I thought, more powerful than I thought+ said Mephiston in Mariah's head.

+We have defeated his army+ replied Mariah.

+He is not merely a sorcerer. He is a plaything of something far more powerful.+ Mephiston's tone grew urgent, passionate even.

+This is about more than just the blade. I see it now. I see why I have been called here. Someone wanted me to know this. Someone wished me to see him here – to be at this battle. It was fated.+

As the Unbegotten Prince rode his serpent across the crimson-splashed ice, he showed no interest in the mounds of slaughtered Guardsmen that clogged the road. Rage boiled through Antros. Every one of those men had died believing they were fighting for the Emperor. Pieter Zorambus had dazzled them with lies and happily watched them all die. He was wearing the same welcoming smile he had shown in Tarn Abbey.

Mariah stood up and unholstered her bolt pistol.

+He will crush you,+ said Mephiston. +And I can't lose you, wait, Mariah.+

There was a crunch of breaking rocks as the Sisters clambered to their feet. Antros whirled around, gun raised, to see Rhacelus striding towards him through the falling snow.

Mephiston froze as a Seraphim lurched and weaved towards them out of the whirling clouds. It was Saint Ophiusa. Her power armour was drenched in blood and there were ragged holes torn in the ceramite. Her veil was gone and her flayed, crimson face stared out of them from the white landscape. She was gasping in pain, clearly near to death, but there was a wild ecstasy burning in her eyes as she looked at Mephiston.

"Astra Angelus," she said, dropping to her knees, smoke trailing from her jump pack. "The moment has come! Providence and prayer… brought you… here. Brought us together. You answered my prayers." She glanced at the destruction taking place behind them. The huge golems were smashing through the walls of Volgatis, tearing down buttresses and towers. "I kept the blade safe for you. There is still time."

Rather than looking at the golems, Mephiston stared at Saint Ophiusa. "The vision was you?" he said. "You summoned me here?"

She looked confused. "Of course. You know I did." She stepped closer, frowning and reaching out to him her voice trembling. "We prayed together. I would not presume… to summon… one such as you. But we agreed that..." She shook her head. "But you know what we have done." She touched her face. "You saved me. You know that we are-"

Rhacelus let out a strange chocking sound and staggered away from them clutching at a hole that had appeared in his chest armour. His eyes were wide with surprise as he looked at Mephiston, Mariah and Antros "I..." he began. The his words trailed off as his skull began to ripple and sag, like it was a sack full of liquid rather than hard bone and brain matter.

"Gaius!" snapped Mephiston, raising his sword, but hesitating to strike.

Rhacelus grasped his head in his hands and bent over double. Then he stood up straight and looked at them. His scowl was gone, replaced by an amiable grin that had no place on Rhacelus' face. Mephiston, Mariah and Antros watched in horror as he stretched his limbs with feline pleasure and sighed. Rhacelus looked physically unchanged – but they knew they were facing Pieter Zorambus, clad in a suit of Blood Angels power armour.

"Impressive..." said Zorambus lifting Rhacelus' sword. "Antiquated but impressive." He dropped into a relaxed fighting stance and beckoned Mephiston and Mariah forwards.

"Astra Angelus!" gasped Saint Ophiusa, dropping onto the snow with blood pooling around her. "He's tricking you! Ignore him! Remember what you must do. Go now. To the fortress! His fellow sorcerer … She is at the Aedicula Sacrum." Her voice became almost incoherent as she fell back, blood filling her mouth. "He's tricking you. Can't you see?"

Mephiston was not looking at her. Blood rolled across his eyes as he saw what had been done to Rhacelus. The blood poured down his cheeks like tears and the cracks of dark fire shimmering across his armour began spitting across the rocks.

Mephiston staggered as Vitarus exploded into flames and a violent tremor rocked the mountainside.

"My lord!" cried Mariah, as Mephiston strode towards Zorambus, drawing back his flaming sword, "The Blade Petrific! Remember why we came!"

Mephiston was gone, consumed by the Gift. As he brought his sword down towards Zorambus' face, the road tore itself up from the ground, wrenched free like iron drawn to a magnet. Vitarus clattered against the sorcerer's falchion, hurling several tonnes of rockcrete in its wake, burying Zorambus in a cloud of dust and rubble.

"Gaius!" roared Mephiston, summoning his wings and launching himself into the air, hovering over the plumes of dust.

Zorambus tumbled back across the mountainside, shocked by the ferocity of Mephiston's blow.

Mephiston drew Vitarus back again and the ground rose up once more, whirling around the blade like a pennant of rocks.

Zorambus cried out in frustration and summoned gaudy, glittering wings of his own, soaring to safety just before Mephiston slammed another landslide onto him.

Antros looked back at Volgatis. The golems had demolished the walls and were now wading through the streets, trampling down temples and punching through statues. Seraphim whirled around them like carrion crows, but their bolter fire was useless, punching holes through the ancient stone but doing nothing to slow their advance.

There was another tremorous boom as Mephiston and Zorambus clashed blades again.

Mariah was hurled back through the dust and landed on the road, towards the fallen gates of the fortress.

"I will find it!" she yelled, sprinting towards Volgatis.

The duel taking place behind her was heaving the mountainside back and forth beneath her feet and she staggered as she ran. As she neared the wreckage of the portico, the ground was also shaking under the pounding of the golems' feet, she vaulted rocks the size of tanks and reached the courtyard. Corpses lay everywhere – Seraphim and Hesbon's dragoons, sprawled over shattered ruins, Seraphim and Blood Angels were hunched in the rubble, firing up at the giants looming overhead, as other sisters looped and dived through the fumes.

Mariah clambered over a toppled wall and grabbed one of the Seraphim by the arm, tuning her to face her. "The Blade Petrific!" she cried, raising his voice over the cacophony. "Where is it!"

Her helmet was gone and she glared at her. "What have you done with the Saint?"

"Do not dare," roared Mariah, overcome by fury, "to question the motives of a Blood Angel!"

She gasped and pulled away, clutching at her hands trying to free herself from her grip. As she struggled, her eyes alighted on the distant statue of the griffon, high at the rear of the convent.

Mariah nodded and loosed her grip.

"What are you?" she demanded, staring at her in horror, blood trickling from her eyes.

Mariah gave no answer and raced off through the raid of falling debris, leaping through the mayhem and running towards the steps.


	21. Chapter 21

Chapter twenty-one.

Volgatis, Divinus Prime.

Mariah looked down from her agonising prison as Mephiston and Rhacelus rolled to a halt and clambered to their feet. Rhacelus' face was a grotesque hybrid – a mixture of the Librarian's own stern features and Zorambus' leering grin.

"Too slow!" Zorambus cried through Rhacelus' mouth, sprinting up the steps towards the woman.

The witch drew back her knife to cleave another hole in reality, but before she could lash out Rhacelus jolted to one side, blasted against the railing that edged the steps.

Mephiston strode after him, his smouldering blade held aloft like a banner and his armour coruscating with warp-flame.

The railing gave way under Rhacelus' armoured bulk and he had to grasp the heat warped strut to halt himself.

As Mephiston approached his possessed friend, the witch led her female companion up the steps towards the statue.

Mariah strained to free herself from the rift the she had been cast into. Her legs felt as though they were sunk in boiling tar. She could barley speak she was in so much pain. "The blade!" she gasped, trying to get Mephiston's Attention.

Mephiston looked up at her. Then he turned to the woman as she ignited the jump pack and launched herself across the abyss, clutching her friend to her chest.

The black cracks that had spread over Mephiston's armour had now splintered across his face. Lines of vivid darkness networked his skin. He looked like a piece of shattered ivory.

Mariah looked at Rhacelus and saw his face was being contorted into a likeness of Zorambus.

Mephiston howled and lifted Vitarus to the skies, summoning wild, fulminous streaks from the clouds. The grin faded from Zorambus' face as Mephiston plunged the shimmering blade into his chest.

Zorambus stiffened and slumped backwards, almost falling into the chasm below. Mephiston grabbed Zorambus by the arm as a sliver of blood rushed from his chest, reforming into the same silverfish swarm that had invaded Rhacelus' body a few minutes earlier.

Rhacelus' body slumped in Mephiston's grip as the silverfish scurried together and piled on top of each other, forming a glittering, humanoid shape.

Mephiston howled again, shedding more darkness from the cracks in his body. He dragged Vitarus from Rhacelus and thrust it at the silver shape.

Crimson spat from the sword, tearing through the half-formed Zorambus and turning the silverfish into a column of red flame.

A searing scream sliced through the storm as the sorcerer finally died, but the red fire did not halt at the destruction of Zorambus; it powered on across the rooftops and spires, ripping through the destruction and razing everything in its path, carving a brilliant red channel through the ruins of Volgatis and lacing out into the toppling peaks beyond.

The blast was so fierce that it knocked Mephiston from his feet and sent crashing back against the steps. He landed heavily, enveloped in his scorched robes, then lay there raging at the clouds and crying out in a torrent of different languages. He lashed out with his sword, as though surrounded by foes only he could see, and with every blow, waves of flame spilled out across the steps, toppling statues and immolating the surrounding corpses, surrounding Mephiston with a whirl wind of fire and dust.

Mariah felt herself being dragged from the world. Clawed, inhuman hands were hauling her down into whatever hellish realm lay beyond the sky. "Mephiston!" she howled.

She strained to look at the shrine behind her and groaned in horror. The witch was hauling a sealed box from the casket beneath the statue. The casket and half the dais were smouldering and glowing were she had blasted them with sorcery. As Mariah slipped from reality, she leapt from the dais, the chest under on arm and her friend under the other, grinning victoriously as she dropped into the crevasse, her jump pack blazing.

Something serpentine and muscular lashed itself around Mariah's chest and jolted her violently. Her sword began to slip from its perch, ripping through the sky as though it were cloth. "Mephiston!" she cried again.

A figure lurched trough the maelstrom and, as it reached Mephiston, Antros saw that it was Rhacelus. His chest armour was drenched in blood and his face was ghastly white, but he managed to dodge the waves of flame Mephiston was hurling and wrestle the Chief Librarian to the ground.

Mephiston grabbed Rhacelus by the throat.

Rhacelus gasped in agony as the Chief Librarian crushed his neck.

Then he grabbed the syringe from Mephiston's armour and jammed it into his lord's neck.

The dark lines faded from Mephiston's armour and he loosened his grip, looking around at the desolation with a dazed expression.

Rhacelus collapsed on the steps and Mephiston stood up, reeling like a drunk and looking for something.

"Mephiston!" cried Mariah, only her head and hand visible. She could just see the crevasse. "She has the blade. The sorcerer. Stop her!"

Mephiston staggered up the steps and looked out at the receding figure. Then he simply nodded and watched her go.

"Stop her,"whispered Rhacelus as all his worst doubts returned to haunt him. Mephiston was letting the witch go. She was a Chaos witch and he was letting her take the Blade Petrific. A crushing despair washed over Mariah as her strength failed her. A forest of unseen limbs enveloped her, wrenching her from the world.


	22. Chapter 22

Chapter twenty-two.

Tamarus Mountains, Divinus Prime.

Antros lay on the mountainside listening to the universe. The skies overhead were clear, an indigo crescent, edged with wisps of crimson cloud and speckled with the tiny silhouettes of eagles, wheeling lazily on distant thermals. There was no mirror, no serpentine horrors, just reality. But it was the chatter of minds that filled Antros with renewed hope. Mephiston and Mariah had also brought an end to the silence of the miracle. With the death of Zorambus, the crushing psychic void of Divinus Prime had been filled with sound. The voices of the imperium once more echoed around Antros' skull. He could hear the tortured screams of astropathic choirs and the unknowable whispers of the Navis Nobilite, steering the imperial navy back to the world they had lost. Divinus Prime was saved – returned to the firm benevolence of the Imperium; so how could Mephiston be anything other than a hero?

Antros groaned as he struggled to lift himself into a sitting position. Mephiston was standing a few feet away near the prone figure of Rhacelus, and Mariah was a few feet away from them looking out at the scenery as she has never been off Baal before now. At first Antros thought Rhacelus might be dead, but then he noticed that the Librarian was twitching and muttering in pain. Rhacelus' chest was cocooned in some kind of psychic shell – a glimmering web of energy that sparked and danced across his armour. Mephiston was not looking at his old friend. He stood right at the cliff edge along side Mariah, looking out across the peaks of the Tamarus Mountains.

Antros stared at him in confusion. Mephiston had brought a world back within reach of the Emperor's light. There were millions of pilgrims and priests scattered across Divinus Prime that would now have a chance at salvation. Mephiston had also hauled Mariah back from whatever hellish realm she had fallen into. And yet… Antros pictured again the moment Mephiston had looked at the witch and let her go. There had been no doubt in the Chief Librarian's eyes. He had nodded quite deliberately before letting her dive to freedom, taking the Blade Petrific with her. What did that mean? How could that be anything other than a traitor?

Mephiston spoke, as though sensing Antros' thoughts.

"The fleet will take a few weeks to reach the planet and lift us from Mormotha," he said.

Antros frowned. "we wait for the fleet? Why not return the way we came?"

Mephiston shook his head and looked down at his still-trembling fist. "we will travel behind the safety of a Geller field, as we should have done when I brought us here. I have made enough mistakes."

Antros looked down at his ruined body. His power armour had been crushed by the battle. He tried again to move but he still could not feel his legs. He wondered how Mephiston imagined they would cross the miles back to the capital.

Antros rested his hand on his bolt pistol, thinking the unthinkable as he considered all that he had seen. The scale of his doubt staggered him. Since the moment of his insanguination, he had believed that the Chief Librarian had been saved by Sanguinius himself – cured of bloodlust and madness as a proof of what the chapter could still be; proof that their bloodline could yet be saved. But now he had seen Mephiston use his power to aid a Chaos-worshipping witch, a heretic who stole a relic so powerful thousands had died trying to protect it. How could such power have come from the Angel?

There was a blast of white noise from Mephiston's vox and then a voice cut through the din.

"Nothing," said Captain Vatrenus in his usual blunt tones.

Mephiston shook his head. "Look again. I know there are dragoons hiding in the caves to the east. We cannot leave any remnants of that army intact."

"Chief Librarian," said Vatrenus, then severed the link.

Antros slowly raised the pistol.

"Perhaps you will kill me, Lexicanium Antros,"said Mephiston calmly, without turning around. "But not today."

Antros stared at the gun, horrified by the accusation, but knowing it was fair, with Mariah giving him a stern look.

"We are transitory beings. Antros," said Mephiston. "To live is to change. We do not remember what we were yesterday or know what we will be tomorrow." Mephiston looked down into the valley at the smouldering wreckage of Volgatis. With the death of Zorambus, his golems had become lifeless stone once more. Even from here their shattered forms were visible, sprawled across the ruins. "perhaps I will never know who saved me that day," continued Mephiston, lowering his voice. "Perhaps I will never know who plucked Calistarius from Hades Hive and created this monster called Mephiston. But I know who I am now, what I am in this moment."

+Mephiston your not a monster you know that, you just need something to anchor the gift so you can control it.+ Mariah added through the link they shared.


End file.
